Fay Vincent, a lawyer who presided over Main League Baseball as its eighth commissioner throughout a time when it was shaken by labor strife, the primary shadows of steroid use and, fairly actually, a robust earthquake that interrupted the 1989 World Sequence, died on Saturday in Vero Seashore, Fla. He was 86.
His loss of life, in a hospital, was brought on by issues of bladder most cancers, his spouse, Christina, stated. Mr. Vincent lived in Vero Seashore.
Earlier than reaching baseball’s highest workplace, Mr. Vincent overcame a debilitating harm as a university scholar to develop into a regulation associate, an official within the Securities Alternate Fee, chairman of Columbia Photos and vice-chairman of Coca-Cola.
However he was most seen to the general public in his time as baseball commissioner, from Sept. 13, 1989, to Sept. 7, 1992, rising to that put up in a interval of grief. He had been deputy commissioner underneath his good buddy A. Bartlett Giamatti when Mr. Giamatti died of a coronary heart assault immediately at 51. The homeowners of the most important league groups then handed Mr. Vincent the reins.
Just a little greater than a month later, he was current when, shortly after 5 p.m. on Oct. 19, 1989, the Bay Space skilled a extreme earthquake — 7.1 on the Richter scale — that brought on San Francisco’s Candlestick Park to rumble, as if able to collapse.
There, the San Francisco Giants had been making ready to face their Bay Space American League counterpart, the Oakland A’s, in Recreation 3 of the World Sequence when the earth shook, forcing cancellation of the sport and a postponement of the Sequence
Sixty-seven folks died within the area, and destruction was widespread. Candlestick Park itself, dwelling of the Giants, was broken when items of concrete fell from the baffle on the prime of the stadium, and its energy was knocked out. There have been requires the Sequence to be canceled for the primary time in World Sequence historical past.
However when the Bay Space had recovered sufficiently every week later, Mr. Vincent ordered the Sequence to renew — a play-ball stance that was broadly praised.
Inside months, in 1990, talks between Main League Baseball and the Gamers Affiliation stalled, prompting the league to impose a lockout. It resulted in a settlement however delayed spring coaching and Opening Day.
Mr. Vincent later suspended George M. Steinbrenner of the Yankees, essentially the most fractious proprietor of all, for paying $40,000 to a recognized gambler, Howard Spira, ostensibly in return for gossip about Dave Winfield, a Yankee who had performed beneath Steinbrenner’s expectations.
In between conflicts, Mr. Vincent by no means appeared happier than when he was going round on a motorized cart, due to his harm, schmoozing with umpires and groundskeepers in addition to gamers and reporters and followers. The homeowners? Not a lot.
Accustomed to being concerned in main points throughout his earlier careers, he inserted himself in contract talks, although many homeowners resisted.
In the identical interval, folks started to suspect that some bulked-up gamers had been utilizing bodybuilding medicine. Mr. Vincent issued a press release that warned towards utilizing unlawful medicine, however he couldn’t impose testing with out the settlement of the Gamers Affiliation and its chief, Donald Fehr, who claimed that such testing would violate the gamers’ rights.
Ultimately, by an 18-9 margin, the homeowners issued a no-confidence vote in Mr. Vincent, and on Sept. 7, 1992, he resigned. To switch him the homeowners appointed Bud Selig, proprietor of the Milwaukee Brewers. It was the primary time an proprietor had been named commissioner.
In an interview for this obituary in 2017, Mr. Vincent stated he might need survived “if I had been higher at protecting the homeowners from attempting to kill the union.”
“I feel I failed,” Mr. Vincent stated, including, “I nonetheless really feel badly about it.”
Francis Thomas Vincent Jr. was born in Waterbury, Conn., on Might 29, 1938, to Francis and Alice (Lynch) Vincent. His mom was a trainer, and his father — who was also called Fay Vincent — was a former soccer star and crew captain at Yale College and an official of the Nationwide Soccer League.
“Six ft, 200 kilos, constructed like Charles Atlas,” Mr. Vincent stated of his father, who instilled in his son ambitions to comply with in Fay Sr.’s footsteps. “All I needed to do was play soccer,” he stated. “I used to be 6-2, 225 at 14. scholar. However solely a mediocre athlete.”
Like his father, he was recruited on a scholarship to attend the personal Hotchkiss Faculty in Lakeville, Conn.
Mr. Vincent’s presumed path to Yale modified when Len Watters, the soccer coach at Williams, recruited him to play for the faculty on an educational scholarship.
Earlier than his freshman yr, Mr. Vincent went with a teammate, William (Bucky) Bush, to work within the Texas oil fields, forming a lifetime friendship along with his teammate’s older brother, George H.W. Bush, and his spouse, Barbara.
After dominating as a lineman on the freshman crew, Mr. Vincent was in his dormitory in December, when a roommate pulled a prank and locked him in his fourth-floor bed room. Needing to make use of the lavatory, Mr. Vincent determined to climb out his window and into an adjoining one however slipped on an icy ledge and fell. A railing on the second ground broke his fall and should have saved his life, however he was left with two damaged vertebrae and it appeared that he can be paralyzed and bedridden for all times.
After a yr of bodily remedy and a grueling routine of train, he turned cell sufficient to return to highschool, although he would use a cane for a lot of the remainder of his life. He knew he would by no means play sports activities once more.
“I used to be in each honor society; I liked each minute of it,” he stated. “However to at the present time I nonetheless dream about enjoying soccer. I by no means bought over that.”
Mr. Vincent attended Yale Regulation Faculty and, after getting his diploma in 1963, labored for 5 years as an affiliate within the New York regulation agency of Whitman and Ransom earlier than shifting to Washington and changing into a associate at Caplin and Drysdale. In 1978, he joined the Securities and Alternate Fee as affiliate director of its company finance division.
However after 4 months, Mr. Vincent was recruited by Herbert A. Allen Jr. (Williams, class of ’62), whose funding financial institution, Allen & Firm, had simply bought Columbia Photos. Mr. Vincent insisted that he knew little or no about Hollywood, however Mr. Allen needed him to be president of Columbia. Mr. Vincent recalled Mr. Allen’s saying, “You aren’t essentially the most thrilling man on the planet, however you might be predictable.’”
When Coca-Cola bought Columbia in 1982, Mr. Vincent was made vice-chairman of Coca-Cola however left after 4 years to work with a brand new buddy, Mr. Giamatti, a Renaissance scholar who was president of Yale on the time. Mr. Vincent was about 40 when the 2 met, discovering they’d a lot in widespread — New England roots, fathers who had gone to Yale, a ardour for baseball and middle-age unrest.
Mr. Giamatti’s writings about baseball led him to the presidency of the Nationwide League, a place that has since been eradicated. And when baseball homeowners provided him the commissioner’s job within the spring of 1989, he persuaded Mr. Vincent to affix him as deputy commissioner.
Quickly they had been coping with proof that the Cincinnati Reds’ supervisor and former All-Star Pete Rose had been betting on video games. Mr. Vincent used his authorized coaching in serving to to barter an settlement with Rose to go away the sport, and on Aug. 24, 1989, Mr. Giamatti introduced that Rose can be banned from baseball for all times.
Per week later, on Sept. 1, Mr. Giamatti died of a coronary heart assault at 51 at his summer time dwelling on Martha’s Winery, Mass., having held the put up for less than 4 months. Crew homeowners named Mr. Vincent to finish his buddy’s five-year time period.
After he was eliminated as baseball commissioner in 1992, Mr. Vincent, at 55, took a six-month sabbatical, residing in a rustic manor exterior Oxford, England.
His first marriage, to Valerie McMahon, resulted in divorce. She died in 2007. He married Christina Clarke Watkins in 1998. She survives him, as do his youngsters from his first marriage, Anne Vincent and William and Edward Vincent, who’re twins; three stepchildren, Jake, Ned and Nilla Watkins; his sisters, Dr. Joanna Vincent and Barbara Vincent; and a number of other grandchildren. He had a house in New Canaan, Conn., in addition to one in Vero Seashore.
After he got here dwelling from England, he was a commissioner for the New England Collegiate Baseball League for seven years, retiring in 2004. He launched into a baseball oral historical past undertaking by which he interviewed stars of the sport spanning six a long time. He wrote a memoir, “The Final Commissioner: A Baseball Valentine” (2002). And he held agency to a perception that Main League Baseball, although occupying a crowded and aggressive sports activities panorama, would endure.
“I don’t suppose folks ought to fear about baseball,” Mr. Vincent stated in 1993. “It has its ups and downs, its ebbs and flows, however it will likely be round. It’s the completely designed recreation.”
Jack Kadden contributed reporting.