Fay Vincent, who took office as Commissioner of Major League Baseball in 1989 and sailed in the League through the Bay Area World series disturbed by the earthquake, died at the age of 86, announced Sunday MLB.
Vincent had undergone radiation and chemotherapy for bladder cancer and developed complications that included bleeding, said his wife, Christina. He asked that this treatment be arrested and died on Saturday in a hospital in Vero Beach, Florida.
“Mr. Vincent served the match for a period of many challenges, and he remained proud of his association with our national hobby throughout his life,” said current commissioner Rob Manfred in a statement.
Vincent became unexpectedly of the eighth baseball commissioner following the death of A. Bartlett Giamatti of a heart attack in 1989. Vincent, who was hired as a sub-commissioner by Giamatti, a longtime friend, then was forced three years later by intentional owners in a Labor Confrontation Confrontation of Work with the Players.
Vincent’s first major test came a month in work.
Just before the first launch of the World Series match 3 of 1989 between athletics and the giants, a massive earthquake struck the San Francisco region. Vincent was immediately put into action, choosing to postpone this night’s match to Candlestick Park, and later the World Series as a whole, for 10 days that the area dealt with the consequences of the earthquake.
“It becomes very clear for us in Major League Baseball that our concerns, our problem, are rather modest,” said Vincent.
The decision was not universally rented; Some thought that the World Series should be canceled given the tragedy. But many praised Vincent’s compassion and decision -making during such a sensitive situation.
“Fay Vincent played a vital role by ensuring that the Bay Area World Series 1989 resumed in a responsible manner after the earthquake before match 3,” said Manfred in his statement.
The troubles followed Vincent during the rest of his reign of more than three years. He had a series of what he called “three cigars”, angry with the owners by becoming the first manager of management to admit collusion among the teams against free agents after the 1985, ’86 and ’87 seasons.
In 1990, baseball endured a 32 -day work stoppage as owners and the union fought for free arbitration, arbitration and income sharing. Vincent finally announced a basic agreement on the ABC, but the lockout wiped out most of the spring training and postponed the start of the regular week.
Later that year that year, Vincent made a life ban to the owner of New York Yankees, George Steinbrenner, who had paid a player known to $ 40,000 to find dirt on New York outfit, Dave Winfield. Steinbrenner was authorized to regain control of the Yankees in 1993.
Vincent issued another life ban in 1992, this time in 1980, the recruit of the NL of the year Steve Howe for repeated drug offenses. A referee restored Howe a year later.
Under the supervision of Vincent, baseball extended to 28 teams, the rocks and the marlins obtaining the approval of the owners of the major league in 1991 and began to play in 1993. As part of the expansion, Vincent Ordered that the National League pays $ 42 million of $ 190 million expanding dollars returned to the American League, and that the AL provides players to the two new NL teams in the draft expansion.
Vincent was also a supporter of realignment and sought to pass the Cubs and the Cardinals of the NL East to the NL West as part of a reconfiguration which would start during the 1993 season. But some teams were against the proposed change – The Cubs fought him in court – and the realignment that Vincent sought had never taken place.
Vincent finally resigned in September 1992 – two years before the end of his five -year term. A month earlier, the owners of major leagues had issued a vote of 18-9 without confidence to Vincent, some of which were not satisfied because of his involvement in the 1990 labor negotiations, his rules on the sharing of income income expansion and its reflections on realignment, among other questions.
“The commissioner must monitor the fans, and the owners do not want to hear this idea for me,” said Vincent.
Vincent, according to some owners, was too friendly.
“I had the condemnation that the commissioner was a confidence of the public. I tried to do what I thought better for the game and the public who cared so much,” said Vincent in an interview in 2023 with The Associated Press. “I had mixed results. Sometimes I am satisfied with what I did.
“The tragedy of baseball is the greatest thing I left to a term was to build a decent relationship between the owners and the players. I thought someone would take the relay after me and would do it. If I died tomorrow , it would be the big regret, it is that players and owners still have to engage in each other to be partners and build the game. “
In one of his sustainable acts as a commissioner, he chaired a committee of eight members for statistical precision, which deleted the asterisk that had been next to the entrance to Roger Maris as chief of Home Run of the season and deleted 50 no-eight. The group has defined a boost like matches of nine or more rounds that ended without success.
The owner of Milwaukee Brewers, Bud Selig, replaced Vincent as a commissioner.
Selig was installed as president of the Executive Council, a new position which made him active commissioner. He led the owners through a strike of 7 and a half months in 1994-1995, was elected commissioner in 1998 and stayed at work until his retirement in 2015.
Originally from Connecticut, Francis Thomas Vincent remained in baseball after his resignation, and he was president of the New England Collegiate Baseball League – a summer in wood for the stars of the college – from 1998 to 2004. The winner of the NECBL Each Summer is rewarded La Fay Vincent Sr. Cup.
Earlier in his life, Vincent worked as a lawyer in New York, was president / chief executive officer of Columbia Pictures and was executive vice-president of Coca-Cola Co., where he headed his entertainment division.
He recorded interviews with members of the renowned temple and Negro leagues players for an oral history project that led to three books: “The Oly Game in Town” (2006), “we would have played for nothing “(2009) and” This is what there is inside the lines that count “(2010). In 2024, he gave a gift of $ 2 million to Yale to provide the position of the Yale baseball coach on behalf of his father.
In 2019, Vincent revealed that he had received a leukemia diagnosis.
“My diagnosis means that the game of life becomes serious and that end of the sleeves,” he wrote in an editorial of the Wall Street Journal.
“I cannot leave the way my life ends to destroy it in the way I would like to remember. Dying is always part of life, and the way we live is vital, even in dying light.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
