Fay Vincent, baseball commissioner in a stormy era, dies at 86

Fay Vincent, a right in Vero Beach, Fla. He was 86.

His death in a hospital was caused by complications of bladder cancer, said his wife Christina. Mr. Vincent lived in Vero Beach.

Before Mr. Vincent reached the highest office of baseball, he overcame a weakening injury as a student as a right-wing partner, official of the Securities Exchange Commission, chairman of Columbia Pictures and deputy chairman of Coca-Cola.

But in his time as a baseball commissioner from September 13, 1989 to September 7, 1992, he was best visible to the public and rose on this post in a time of grief. He had been a deputy commissioner under his good friend A. Bartlett Giamatti when Mr. Giamatti suddenly died of a heart attack at 51.

He was present a little more than a month later when the Bay Area experienced a heavy earthquake shortly after 5 p.m. on October 19, 1989 – 7.1 on the Richter scale – which led apart.

There the San Francisco Giants prepared for the College of College of the Bay Area American League, the Oakland a’s, in game 3 of the World Series, when The Earth shook, and forced the cancellation of the game and a shift in the series

Sixty people died in the region and the destruction was widespread. The Candlestick Park itself, the home of the Giants, was damaged when concrete pieces fell from the soundproofing at the top of the stadium and its strength was switched off. There was a view that the series was canceled for the first time in the history of the World Series.

But when the Bay Area had sufficiently recovered a week later, Mr. Vincent ordered the series to resume again-a widespread play ball.

Within months, in 1990, the talks between Major League Baseball and the Players Association stood, which caused the league to impose a lock. It ended in a settlement, but delayed spring training and the opening day.

Mr. Vincent later spanned George M. Steinbrenner of the Yankees, the most broken owner of all, for the payment of 40,000 US dollars to a well -known player, Howard Spira, supposedly in return for gossip about Dave Winfield, a Yankee that played under Steinbrenner expectations had.

Between conflicts, Mr. Vincent never seemed happier than when he walked around in a motorized car because he shobmozeted with referees and ground kebab as well as players, reporters and fans. The owner? Not so much.

He was used to being involved in important problems in his earlier careers, and intervened in contract talks, even though many owners resisted.

During the same period, people suspected that some players consumed with bodybuilding medication. Mr. Vincent made an explanation that warned of the use of illegal drugs, but without the agreement of the player Association and his leader Donald Fehr, he could not carry out any tests that claimed that such tests would violate the rights of the players.

In the end, the owners spent a non-representation vote with a lead from 18 to 9 in Mr. Vincent, and he resigned on September 7, 1992. To replace him, the owners Bud Selig, owner of the Milwaukee Brewers. It was the first time that an owner was appointed commissioner.

In an interview for this obituary in 2017, Mr. Vincent said he survived “if I could prevent the owners from killing the union.”

“I think I failed,” said Mr. Vincent and added: “I still feel bad.”

Francis Thomas Vincent Jr. was born on May 29, 1938 in Waterbury, Connecticut, the son of Francis and Alice (Lynch) Vincent. His mother was a teacher, and his father – who was also known as Fay Vincent – was a former football star and team captain at Yale University and Official of the National Football League.

“Six foot, 200 pounds, built like Charles Atlas,” said Mr. Vincent about his father, who brought his son ambitions to Fay Sr.’s footsteps. “I just wanted to play football,” he said. “I was 6-2, 225 at 14. But only a mediocre athlete. “

Like his father, he was set to a scholarship to visit the private Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn.

Mr. Vincent’s alleged way to Yale changed when Len Watter’s, the football coach at Williams, hired him for college for an academic scholarship.

Before his first year, Mr. Vincent went with a teammate William (Bucky) Bush to work in the oil fields in Texas, and closed a lifelong friendship with his teammate’s older brother, George HW Bush, and his wife Barbara.

After Mr. Vincent dominated as a Lineman in the Freshman team, he was in his dormitory in December when a roommate pulled a prank and closed him in his bedroom on the fourth floor. Mr. Vincent had to use the bathroom, decided to climb from his window into an adjacent, but slipped to an icy rock ahead and fell. A railing on the second floor broke his fall and may have saved his life, but he remained two broken vertebrae and it seemed that it would be paralyzed and bedridden for life.

After a year of physiotherapy and a strenuous training session, he became mobile enough to return to school, even though he uses a stick for a large part of his life. He knew that he would never do sports again.

“I was in every honor; I loved it every minute, ”he said. “But to this day I still dream of playing football. I never got over it. “

Mr. Vincent visited the Yale Law School and, after graduating in 1963, worked for five years as an employee in the New York law firm Whitman and Ransom before moving to Washington and becoming a partner at Caplin and Drysdale. In 1978 he joined the Securities and Exchange Commission as Associate Director of the Corporate Finance Division.

But after four months, Mr. Vincent was recruited by Herbert A. Allen Jr. (Williams, class of ’62), whose investment bank Allen & Company had just bought Columbia Pictures. Mr. Vincent insisted that he knew very little about Hollywood, but Mr. Allen wanted him to be President of Columbia. Mr. Vincent remembered that Mr. Allen said: “You are not the most exciting guy in the world, but you are predictable.”

When Coca-Cola bought Columbia in 1982, Mr. Vincent was appointed deputy chairman of Coca-Cola, but after four years, to a new friend, Mr. Giamatti, a Renaissance scholar who was a president of Yale at that time. Mr. Vincent was about 40 years old when the two met and found that they had a lot together in England root, fathers who had gone to Yale, a passion for baseball and unstable middle-aged.

Mr. Giamatti’s writings on baseball led him to the presidency of the National League, a position that has been removed since then. And when baseball owner offered him the commissioner in spring 1989, he persuaded Mr. Vincent to join him as deputy commissioner.

Soon they dealt with evidence that the manager of Cincinnati Reds and the former all-star Pete Rose had relied on games. Mr. Vincent used his legal training to negotiate an agreement with Rose about leaving the game, and on August 24, 1989, Mr. Giamatti announced that Rose would be banished for the life of baseball.

A week later, on September 1st, Mr. Giamatti died of a heart attack at 51 in his summer house in Marthas Vineyard, Massachusetts, and had only held the position for four months. The team owners called Mr. Vincent, who had visited Mr. Giamatti the weekend before in the vineyard to complete the five -year term of his friend.

After he was removed as a baseball commissioner in 1992, Mr. Vincent took a six-month sabbatical at the age of 55 and lived in a country men outside of Oxford, England.

His first marriage to Valerie McMahon ended in divorce. She died in 2007. He married Christina Clarke Watkins in 1998. Like his children from his first marriage, she survives him, Anne Vincent and William and Edward Vincent, who are twins; Three stepchildren, Jake, Ned and Nilla Watkins; His sisters, Dr. Joanna Vincent and Barbara Vincent; And several grandchildren. He had a home in New Canan, Conn., As well as in Vero Beach.

After he came home from England, he was commissioned by the New England Collegiate Baseball League for seven years and retired in 2004. He wrote a memoire, “The Last Commissioner: A Baseball Valentine” (2002). And he stated that the Major League baseball would last, even though it occupies a crowded and competitive sports landscape.

“I think people should worry about baseball,” said Mr. Vincent 1993. It is the perfectly designed game. “

Jack Kadden has contributed to the reporting.