It was entirely fitting that longtime John’s Island resident Fay Vincent wrote his memoir in 2002 under the title, “The Last Commissioner.”
That’s what he was.
That’s how baseball should remember him, following his death Saturday at Cleveland Clinic-Indian River Hospital, where his wife Christina said he succumbed to complications of bladder cancer at age 86.
Vincent, who served as baseball’s commissioner from 1989 to 1992, was the eighth man to occupy that once-exalted office. He was also the last to steadfastly put the best interests of the game above the bank accounts of the team owners.
It was his refusal to cave to the owners’ demand that he crush the players’ union, in fact, that produced an overwhelming no-confidence vote and prompted his resignation only 3 ½ years into a five-year contract.
“They weren’t happy with me as commissioner,” Vincent told me in March 2018, during one of our many conversations. “I was there at the wrong time. They were at war with the players … and they thought I was too soft on the union.”
He would go on to say: “They wanted to destroy the union and roll back the gains that the players had made, and they knew I would’ve stood in their way.”
His obstruction galled the owners, who hired him, paid his salary and wanted him to conduct himself as their CEO – not as a fair and objective arbiter, especially in matters pertaining to collective bargaining.
Vincent wouldn’t do that.
Anyone who knew the man knew he couldn’t do that.
Vincent’s affection for baseball was genuine, even romantic, harkening back to a more innocent time in America. He enthusiastically embraced his role as commissioner, which he inherited when his close friend and predecessor, Bart Giamatti, died of a massive heart attack on Sept. 1, 1989, at age 51, only 154 days into his term.
For Vincent, whom Giamatti summoned to be his deputy upon accepting the job, presiding over the game was a labor of love, despite all the challenges he encountered during his tumultuous run as commissioner.
But he refused to betray his honor, compromise on his principles or erode the integrity of the game – rare qualities that, sadly, have been devalued over the 30-plus years since Vincent left baseball and now appear to be outdated.
Vincent, as did Giamatti before him, believed the game needed an independent commissioner, beholden to no one. And he was fiercely protective of the vast powers historically entrusted to the office.
His unwillingness to sell his soul sealed his fate.
At one point, Vincent publicly admitted there was collusion by the owners in the 1980s, when they agreed to conspire to avoid competitive bidding for players. The union went to court, and the owners eventually settled three claims for a total of $280 million.
The owners, as a group, never forgave him.
As Vincent shared with me during our 50-minute interview seven years ago: Not once in the 25 years since he resigned did the Commissioner’s Office invite him to attend a World Series or an All-Star Game, or even the playoffs.
Only once was Vincent invited to throw out a ceremonial first pitch – by former New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon to celebrate Opening Day in 1993.
Vincent wouldn’t say he was “hurt” by the shabby treatment he received, but there was a melancholy tone to his words and an unmistakable pain in his voice as he recalled what had become a cruel, spiteful, disgraceful and not-so-subtle shunning.
Meanwhile, the owners got what they wanted in Bud Selig, the Milwaukee Brewers owner who succeeded the ousted Vincent and managed baseball as they saw fit.
Rarely during his reign did Selig mention Vincent’s name – and not in any positive way. Never did he seek his predecessor’s counsel.
“To do such a difficult job for them and not be appreciated was very disappointing,” Vincent told me. “It would’ve been nice to get even tepid applause on the way out, but there wasn’t even that.
“They wanted me gone, and they never regretted what they did,” he added. “But I understand why.”
For what it’s worth: Current Baseball Commissioner Robert Manfred acknowledged some of Vincent’s contributions to the game – specifically his roles in “responsibly” resuming the 1989 World Series after a major earthquake rocked the San Francisco Bay area before Game 3, and the 1993 National League expansion to Denver and Miami – in a statement released last weekend.
“Mr. Vincent served the game during a time of many challenges,” the statement read, “and he remained proud of his association with our national pastime throughout his life.”
In addition to the Series quake, which shook Candlestick Park and caused widespread destruction, Vincent’s term also included a spring-training lockout by the owners in 1990 and the suspension of New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner for paying $40,000 to a known gambler.
When he wasn’t defending the lifetime ban on Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose, the game’s all-time hits leader, for betting on baseball, Vincent was confronting the early signs of what would become known as the game’s Steroid Era.
Noticing that some players appeared to be bulking up – and concerned they might be using body-building drugs to enhance performance on the field – Vincent sent a memo to every team in 1991, warning that the use of illegal steroids was prohibited by law and, thus, prohibited in baseball, too.
The policy was unenforceable, however, because the commissioner could not impose testing for such drugs without the players’ union’s approval, and the union’s leadership opposed it.
Steroid use would become prominent in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s – a cancer-like scandal that metastasized on Selig’s watch – when the drug cheats turned baseball’s once-sacred record book into a grim fairy tale.
As for Vincent, he would use the commissioner’s pulpit to speak in favor of eliminating the designated hitter, which baseball had adopted in the American League in 1973, and offered a National League realignment plan that produced a successful lawsuit from the Chicago Cubs, who objected to being moved to the Western Division.
While his ideas weren’t often well-received, they always considered the fans’ best interest.
Perhaps Vincent’s favorite part of the job was going to the ballpark, where he would chat with players and coaches around the batting cage, visit the umpires’ room before games, and mingle with members of the stadium grounds crew.
He loved Opening Day, and even after being snubbed by baseball’s brass, he annually looked forward to watching the games on television.
“It’s still special to me,” Vincent said during another of our conversations, this one at his home here, just weeks before he would leave for his summer place in Connecticut.
“To me, Opening Day is like the return of a family that’s been away on vacation,” he added. “It feels like an old family friend has come home. It brings back something I’ve been missing.”
To be sure, Vincent’s love of baseball played a significant role in his decision to accept Giamatti’s offer to join the Commissioner’s Office.
He didn’t need the job.
A Yale Law School graduate, Vincent practiced law in Washington, D.C., and served as an associate director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
He was named chairman of Columbia Pictures in 1978, and he later became executive vice president of Coca-Cola – business experience that made him attractive to Giamatti, a former Yale president and English Renaissance Literature professor.
The two men had previously met at a Yale-Princeton football game.
For those who don’t know: Vincent played on the freshman football team at Williams College in 1956, but he was seriously injured when he fell from the icy ledge of a four-story window and broke his back on a railing – the tragic result of a dorm-room prank.
Initially paralyzed from the chest down, Vincent learned to walk again, but the two crushed vertebrae ended his athletic career.
For the rest of his life, he often walked with a cane and relied on golf carts to get around when visiting ballparks, including spring-training stops at the former Dodgertown complex in Vero Beach.
Through it all, Vincent never stopped loving baseball.
It was no coincidence, then, that the subtitle to his memoir was: “A Baseball Valentine.”
Too bad baseball didn’t love him back.