By Matt Crossman
Fay Vincent, a long-time resident of John’s Island who served three tumult-filled years as commissioner of Major League Baseball in the early 1990s and negotiated a controversial lifetime ban of player-manager Pete Rose for gambling on baseball games, died Feb. 1 at Cleveland Clinic Indian River Hospital. He was 86.
The cause was complications from bladder cancer, said his wife, Christina.
Mr. Vincent was an Ivy-League-educated corporate lawyer and a politically connected boardroom leader, but he was a relative unknown to baseball fans when he ascended to the commissioner’s job in 1989.
His leadership was tested repeatedly throughout his three-year tenure by the Rose matter; his suspension of George Steinbrenner, the powerful owner of the New York Yankees; by an earthquake during the World Series in California; and by internal dissension among team owners.
Francis Thomas Vincent Jr. was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, on May 29, 1938, and grew up in New Haven. Vincent received his degree from Williams in 1960 and graduated from Yale Law School in 1963. He spent years specializing in corporate banking and securities law as a partner at the firm of Caplin & Drysdale. He also served as a top executive at Columbia Pictures and Coca-Cola.
In 1998, he married Christina Watkins, who survives, along with three children from his first marriage, Anne, William and Edward; three stepchildren; two sisters; and several grandchildren. He had homes in Vero Beach and New Canaan, Connecticut.
From The Washington Post
