Fay Vincent, 1938-2025

Baseball has had 10 Commissioners. Four of them -- Albert "Happy" Chandler, Peter Ueberroth, Bart Giamatti and Francis "Fay" Vincent -- were decent men who acted as if they loved the game. One, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, was a bigoted tyrant. Four -- Ford Frick, William Eckert, Bowie Kuhn and the current officeholder, Rob Manfred -- have been stooges for the team owners. One was a team owner, Bud Selig.

Chandler and Vincent refused to be stooges for the team owners, and each was fired for it.

Francis Thomas Vincent Jr. was born on May 29, 1938 in Waterbury, New Haven County, Connecticut, 88 miles northeast of Midtown Manhattan. Like George Steinbrenner, with whom he would later come into conflict, he was a graduate of Williams College in Western Massachusetts. 

While there, he had been locked inside his dorm room as a prank. Climbing onto the roof to escape, he slipped off a four-story ledge, badly injuring his back and legs. Surgery and three months in traction followed. He overcame an initial diagnosis he would never walk again, but his leg never fully recovered, and he relied on a cane for the rest of his life.

He got a law degree from Yale, worked in private practice, and for the Securities & Exchange Commission, before being named chairman of Columbia Pictures. On the one hand, he oversaw the production of Kramer vs. Kramer (1979's biggest box office hit and Oscar winner for best picture) and Tootsie (1982's 3rd-biggest hit and a Best Picture nominee). On the other hand, he also oversaw the production of Ishtar. So, let's move along.

His longtime friend and fellow Yalie, Bart Giamatti, was named Commissioner of Baseball in 1989. Giamatti asked him to become Deputy Commissioner. In that office, Vincent played a major role in negotiating a settlement to the betting scandal involving Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose. As part of the settlement, Rose agreed to withdraw from the sport for an indefinite period of time to avoid further punishment.

On September 1, 1989, just 7 days after announcing Rose's ban, Giamatti suffered a heart attack, and died. After consulting with Giamatti's widow, Toni, he agreed to succeed Giamatti as Commissioner, and was duly elected by the MLB owners on September 13. Just in his 1st few weeks on the job, he had to oversee the logistical issues of the earthquake-affected World Series in the San Francisco Bay Area. Everyone agreed that he had handled it properly.

Things didn't get easier in 1990, as the owners locked the players out of Spring Training, and he had to settle things. The fact that he settled them rather evenly, without favoring the team owners, did not please them. He also had to deal with an issue involving Steinbrenner, resulting in Steinbrenner's suspension as operating owner of the New York Yankees, a suspension that was lifted for the 1993 season.

He also oversaw MLB's expansion of 1991-93, adding the Colorado Rockies and the team now known as the Miami Marlins, and the accompanying realignment of each of the major leagues into 3 geographical divisions instead of the previous 2, effective with the 1994 season.

But the owners were angry at Vincent over his intervention during the 1990 lockout, and disappointed by dwindling television ratings in light of the deal MLB made with CBS. Vincent said in his memoir that he "didn't see himself as a lackey whose job it was to massage the owner’s egos and do their bidding."

On September 7, 1992, the owners voted 18-9 in favor of a no-confidence vote. It wasn't a firing, but it was a message that Vincent would not be permitted to complete Giamatti's term in 1994. He resigned, saying:

To do the job without angering an owner is impossible. I can't make all twenty-eight of my bosses happy. People have told me I'm the last Commissioner. If so, it's a sad thing. I hope they learn this lesson before too much damage is done.

The new Commissioner wasn't his Deputy, Steve Greenberg, a broadcast executive (who went on to found what became ESPN Classic) and the son of Hall-of-Famer Hank Greenberg. Instead, the owners chose the Chairman of their own Executive Committee, Allan H. "Bud" Selig -- one of their own, the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers.

He lasted 6 years as "Interim Commissioner" (twice as long as Vincent was the actual Commissioner) and an obvious conflict of interest, before selling his family's share of the Brewers, allowing him to become the official Commissioner, a post he held until 2015. Only Landis ruled over baseball for longer, and no one did more damage to the sport.

Fay Vincent became a private investor, and from 1998 to 2004 served as the president of the New England Collegiate Baseball League.

Vincent married Valerie McMahon in 1965. They raised 3 children, and divorced in 1994. His 2nd marriage, to Christina Watkins, lasted from 1998 to his death, this past Saturday, February 1, 2025, from cancer, in Vero Beach, Florida, at the age of 86.

Fay Vincent loved baseball more than he loved money. And he valued integrity more than he valued the opinions of the team owners. That's why he lost his job. That's also why he won the hearts of baseball fans.