$Unique_ID{BAS00179}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{The Commissioners}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{
Suehsdorf, A.D.}
$Subject{Commission Commissioner Commissioners Landis Chandler Frick Spike
Eckert Kuhn Ueberroth Giamatti Vincent}
$Log{}

Total Baseball:  The Game Off the Field


The Commissioners

A.D. Suehsdorf


     From the beginning, organized baseball has been controlled by the owners
of the major league clubs. Acting in concert and accountable only to
themselves, they have parceled out the franchises, built the grandstands, set
the ticket prices, assembled the players, written the game's rules, defined
league structure and operation, dominated the minor league dependencies, and,
until recent times, bound their players absolutely through the reserve clause
written into every contract. Virtually the only restraint on this monopoly
power has been fear of alienating the fans from whom all profit flows by
actions or circumstances threatening confidence in the honesty and integrity
of the game. Even this, on occasion, has been put at risk.
     Owner power has been matched by owner intractability. Whatever their
virtues as individuals, baseball owners in the aggregate through much of their
history have been quarrelsome, devious, inclined to factional fights, and to
circumventing, if not subverting, the rules of their own National Agreement
under which all baseball is expected to operate. In part this has resulted
from their paradoxical position as cooperative competitors, in part from the
entrepreneur's traditional resistance to authority.
     During the quarter century of National League supremacy (1876-1900), it
was of little consequence that the league presidents were figureheads and the
owners' squabbles flagrant. But when Ban Johnson's American League
established itself as an equal in 1901--the first and only competitor ever to
do so--it became imperative to create an agency empowered to arbitrate matters
between the still-touchy partners and to present a facade of unity to the
outside world.
     The result was the National Commission of 1903:  the two league
presidents, Ban Johnson of the American League and Harry Pulliam of the
National, and August "Garry" Herrmann, president of the Cincinnati Reds, as
unsalaried chairman. The National League's edge was more apparent than real.
Gemutlich Garry was an old friend of Ban's and had won regard in both leagues
for his efforts in mediating peace between them. Further, while Herrmann and
Johnson served all seventeen years of the Commission's life, the National
League had four presidents, breaks in continuity that diminished its role.
And in any event the triumvirate was dominated by the dynamic Johnson, whose
wit, energy, and administrative skill soon made him the acknowledged "Czar of
Baseball".
     Basically, the Commission's responsibility was interpretation and
enforcement of the National Agreement, and punishment of violations by fines
and suspensions. Neither the minor leagues nor the players were officially
represented. The Commission assumed protection of their rights in grievances
against individual clubs or the major leagues, although its concern was
paternalistic at best. Intra-league matters were left to the appropriate
president and his board of directors.
     Overall, historians give the Commission marks of fair to good for its
efforts. The first twelve years of its existence were prosperous, relatively
harmonious, and progressive insofar as they consolidated baseball as the
national pastime. The final five were a time of anger, turmoil, and
disruption.
     Strain was inherent, for the concept of the National Commission was
fundamentally flawed. League presidents, by their nature, could not view
intra- and inter-league affairs equably. The club owners of each league
expected the loyalty of their Commission representative and were infuriated
when justice or equity required a decision that went against them. It also
was impossible to select a neutral chairman from among the owners themselves,
yet the money men were never pleased to do the bidding of commissioners who
had no financial stake in the game.
     In external affairs the Commission did reasonably well. Dealings with
the Base Ball Players Fraternity (1912-17), while accompanied by bluster and
stonewalling, were on the whole conducted fairly and brought about some
improvements in player contracts. It contributed to settlement of the Federal
League uprising and to keeping the game going during World War I.
     Internally, it lacked the heart to confront long-range baseball problems,
such as gambling, which was widespread in and around ballparks, and, in
consequence, an undercurrent of crooked players, bribe offers, and thrown
games. Investigations were tentative, conclusions irresolute:  A coat of
whitewash, or passing the buck to the league or teams concerned, while sighing
with relief that no one outside baseball was the wiser.
     As men of their time, the Commissioners shared proprietors' beliefs in
the sanctity of property and the subservience of labor, and rigorously upheld
the reserve and ten-day clauses, while assiduously avoiding any legal test of
their validity. Yet despite this tilt toward their employers, they showed
their best side in the justice of many difficult decisions affecting the
commerce in players.
     Under the National Agreement players had the right to advance as far and
as fast as their talents permitted. Contrarily, they were not to be "farmed"
or "covered up" or otherwise hindered from pursuing this goal. The Agreement
was inspired less by a regard for players than by assurance of an open market
for owners, so that by offering opportunity to baseball's best prospects the
clubs would enjoy a competitive balance and hold fan interest. Yet for the
owners a gentleman's agreement was always more compelling than the national
one. They connived with each other to diddle the draft, waiver, and option
processes, and, incidentally, to limit salaries and rosters, hold up the pay
of injured players, and burden released players with the travel costs of
getting wherever they were being sent. Such sharp practice and cheese-paring
economies were considered shrewd business, and the Commission, when it did not
agree with them, was hard put to remedy any but the most egregious injustices.
     Where it was most at risk was in settling conflicting claims to
players--viz., Sisler to the Browns instead of the Pirates, Quinn to the
Yankees, not the White Sox. These interclub fights were bitter and the losers
nursed their grievances for years. Cumulatively, they were serious enough to
topple the Commission. The last straw was President Johnson's suspension of
Carl Mays in mid-1919. Having gone AWOL from the Red Sox, the pitcher was
traded to New York in defiance of Ban's order that no deal be made until Mays
had been disciplined. This enraged both clubs, as well as long-simmering
malcontents in both leagues who had had enough of Ban, whether as president,
commissioner, or czar. The Yankees got the suspension overturned in court.
The American League drastically reduced Ban's authority by appointing a
two-owner committee to review all but the most minor fines and suspensions.
And the National League, long exasperated with Herrmann for being Johnson's
docile creature, forced him to resign. Johnson, having lost his customary
American League backing, was powerless to keep Garry in office, although he
bullheadedly blocked the election of a new Commission chairman. As rancor led
to impasse, the baseball establishment drifted.
     To prod the owners out of their rut, Albert D. Lasker, a prominent
Chicago advertising man and a substantial stockholder in the Cubs, proposed a
new commission of three distinguished, disinterested public figures with
"unreviewable authority" over owners, players, and franchises. Wearied as
they were of bosses from within the ranks, the magnates did not welcome
supervision by outsiders as an improvement. While they maundered, the Black
Sox scandal broke.
     Horrified, if not surprised, by this corruption of their enterprise, the
owners took dramatic action to restore public confidence in the game.
Although splintered by in-house controversy and intrigue, they mustered a
majority vote to scrap the National Agreement and create a new three-man
commission. Shortly after a Grand Jury heard evidence of the 1919 World
Series fix, they named Kenesaw Mountain Landis as their principal
Commissioner.
     Then 53, Landis had been a Federal district court judge for fifteen
years. He was meagerly educated, narrow in vision, and simplistic in his
judicial decisions, many of which were overturned on appeal. Nonetheless,
with his craggy face, dramatic shock of white hair, and flamboyant manner, not
to mention an easily aroused sense of outrage, he had the public image of a
fierce but twinkly eyed man of rectitude. The owners were certain he saw
things their way. In 1915, he had delayed action on the Federal League's
antitrust suit against the majors until a negotiated settlement could be
reached and the need for a decision was past, thus avoiding once again a legal
test of baseball's monopoly status. To the press and public, he had the
common touch of a lifelong affection for the Cubs and, to all appearances, the
backbone to clean up baseball's mess.
     Commissioner Landis took office in January, 1921 (although not
surrendering his seat on the Federal bench for another year). His mandate was
to deal as he saw fit with anything deemed "detrimental" to baseball. His
powers were written into a new National Agreement and incorporated in player
contracts. His decisions and penalties were to be binding. There could be no
recourse to the courts and no public criticism. Even the most tentative
objections were met by threats of resignation before which the owners
invariably quailed.
     Landis relished the free hand he had demanded and got. The appointment
of associate commissioners was forgotten, and even as advisers, the two league
presidents--Johnson and John A. Heydler--generally were ignored.
     The eight Black Sox were first to feel the Commissioner's wrath.
Whatever the courts might determine, in Judge Landis' eyes their conduct had
been atrociously detrimental to baseball and he banned them all, plus Joe
Gedeon, who had "guilty knowledge," for life.
     Player delinquency was a continuing embarrassment. Old villainies
surfaced and new ones occurred. Over the next several years six more players
were expelled and many others declared ineligible for varying periods.
Landis' sweeping actions often were inconsistent, arbitrary, and unfair.
Some rascals escaped scrutiny. Some great stars were acquitted on their own
say-so. A few culprits were severely punished for trifles. Benny Kauff,
indicted for, but acquitted of, auto theft, was ruled permanently ineligible
because Landis decided he was probably guilty. Ray Fisher was blacklisted
without explanation, hearing, or appeal, evidently for negotiating with an
"outlaw" club. Petitions for reinstatement of such sinners as Buck Weaver
were refused or went unanswered.
     Landis opposed all forms of gambling--horse racing especially--and tried
to keep gamblers out of the ballparks, but with indifferent success. He
failed to act against the known gambling connections of Charles Stoneham of
the Giants; the racing stables of Frank Navin of Detroit, or the betting
proclivities of such dedicated horse players as John McGraw and Rogers
Hornsby.
     Still, by his vehemence and persistence he sent a clear message to
baseball that crooks and cheats would not be tolerated, and he persuaded
Americans that he was making their game honest again.
     For all his harshness, he acted to protect the rights of players and
professed sympathetic interest in them. He cracked down on cover-ups and
other management maneuvering that impeded players' progress, although here,
too, he was ever unpredictable. In two cover-up cases six months apart, he
made the Indians turn Tommy Henrich loose, while allowing them to keep Bob
Feller.
     Similarly, he favored an unrestricted draft and fought a losing battle
against the farm system, most prominently in skirmishes with Branch Rickey,
farming's principal architect. In 1938, he made free agents of 91 Cardinal
farmhands unfairly sequestered, and in 1940 another 91 young Tigers. Landis'
resistance to the farm system began soon after he was installed as
Commissioner and it remained a central issue of his many years in office.
Whether farming killed minor league ball or kept it alive, it was an idea
whose time had come, and Landis alienated many owners by his efforts to stamp
it out.
     The Judge loved to preside at the World Series each year. As an
interleague affair, it always had been a National Commission responsibility,
but Landis had his own czarist inclinations and went beyond scheduling,
umpires, and distribution of receipts to make the event uniquely his own. He
reduced the format from nine games to seven, negotiated the first contracts
for radio broadcasting, and, as he was always in attendance with his chin on
the railing of a front-row box, he usurped the umpires' authority to call a
game or oust a player--most notably the removal of Ducky Medwick in 1934.
     It did not take the owners long to regret their hasty and comprehensive
surrender of power. By the mid-1920s they were grumbling at Landis'
interference in player transactions, and by 1932 voted limits on his
jurisdiction in this area. The opprobrium once reserved for Ban Johnson was
now applied to Landis, but stopped short of calling his bluff about quitting.
Capricious, high-handed, and profane as he was, he was also an unassailable
national institution. Among his last acts was the legitimate but Draconian
expulsion of owner William D. Cox for betting on his Philadelphia Phillies.
Frail and ill as his term reached 24 years, the Judge still was the only
logical candidate for Commissioner on the owners' horizon. He died at 78 in
1944 and was elected to baseball's Hall of Fame.
     Rid of the tyrant at last, the magnates threw off a few of their
shackles. They restricted the detrimental-to-baseball authority by exempting
from it all their major league rules and any action taken in compliance with
them. They wiped out the gag that prohibited criticizing a Commissioner's
ruling, or going to court to block it. And they changed the margin for
approval of an interleague action from a simple majority to three quarters of
the clubs of each league.
     They then chose 47-year-old Senator Albert B. "Happy" Chandler of
Kentucky as Landis' successor. It was a surprise appointment engineered by
Larry MacPhail, then a Yankee owner, who brought his colleagues, divided and
squabbling as usual, to a decision.
     A greater contrast to Landis would have been hard to find. Happy was the
prototypical politico:  shrewd, ebullient, folksy, and smarter than he seemed.
The owners obviously wanted a glad-handing good-will ambassador for baseball
and a lightweight boss for themselves. They got the first, but not the
second. Although rather too exuberant and good ol' boy for the New York
press, which thought him foolish and began to ride him hard, Happy was his own
man. He bluntly told his new employers that they did not own baseball, that
it was America's game and would remain so as long as fans did not think it "a
bloody business" run by profiteers. This did not sit well in baseball's
councils; nor did his efforts to improve wages and working conditions for
umpires and his support of benefits for players, such as a minimum wage
($5,000!), a 25 percent limit on salary cuts, and a pension plan to be funded
by a percentage of the receipts from television and radio broadcasts of the
World Series.
     If the owners were displeased, they knew they were in a weak position
from which to object. In 1946, the upstart Mexican League was an enticing
alternative to players uncertain about the level and stability of their
baseball earnings.
     Chandler met the Mexican League threat by suspending 18 jumpers for five
years (though granting amnesty in 1949, when the insurrection failed).
Several of the disgruntled jumpers thereupon filed suits challenging the
sacred reserve clause, which was a profound worry to the owners until the
clubs involved persuaded the plaintiffs to withdraw. Still, Chandler was seen
as having invited an unnecessary risk.
     The most significant event of his regime was the integration of the major
leagues by Brooklyn's introduction of Jackie Robinson; the most sensational
was the one-year suspension of Brooklyn's manager, Leo Durocher, both in April
1947.
     While not a prime mover in Robinson's arrival, Happy was openly and
genuinely supportive of Branch Rickey's stunning assault on the game's
long-standing color barrier. Unlike Landis, who addressed the matter only
obliquely--in blocking Bill Veeck's attempt to buy the Phils and recruit Negro
Leaguers for them--Chandler spoke forthrightly in favor of integration.
     Durocher's suspension was brought on specifically by an unseemly
confrontation between Leo and Larry MacPhail, but it appeared to stem from
official exasperation with an accumulation of Durocher scrapes, altercations,
dubious associations, on-field rows, and marital difficulties, all of which
presumably added up to that convenient catch-all, "conduct detrimental to
baseball."  It was the stiffest penalty ever levied against a manager.
     Unfortunately, having pronounced judgment without citing the particulars
on which it was based, Chandler enforced silence on all parties and refused to
discuss it himself. In the confusion and controversy which followed, it was
never made clear whether the suspension "year" was the duration of the
baseball season or the calendar's twelve months, whether a suspended manager's
contract was valid, and whether, at suspension's end, he could be rehired.
Far from a salutary punishment, l'affaire Durocher made a martyr of Leo and
lost face for Happy.
     Throughout his term, the Commissioner was confronted by the ineradicable
problems of owner manipulation of baseball rules and of inappropriate
association with racing or gambling interests. In a remarkable burst of
confidence, Alva Bradley of the Indians confessed blandly to generalized owner
cheating, and Chandler encountered enough violations of the option process and
premature signing of high school prospects to believe him.
     As always, investigations of possible wrong-doing made no friends, and
adverse decisions always made enemies. Hearing rumbles of dissatisfaction
before the winter meetings of 1950, the penultimate year in which, by custom,
reelection of the Commissioner would be considered, Happy asked for a vote of
confidence. Nine were for, seven against--three short of the mandatory three
quarters. Happy resigned, accepting one year's salary as severance. In 1982,
he was elected to the Hall of Fame.
     Ford C. Frick, 56, a one-time "gee-whiz" sportswriter and, since 1934,
president of the National League, was picked to replace Happy in 1951. He was
a compromise candidate maneuvered into the job by Walter O'Malley of Brooklyn,
an emerging power among the magnates.
     Now fully recovered from the Landis era, the owners had acquired the
complacent, pliable Commissioner most to their liking. In the span of Frick's
two seven-year terms, baseball underwent revolutionary changes, not one of
them bearing his imprint. He busied himself with administrative detail,
pursuing the struggle against gambling, punishing management infractions of
baseball rules, and occasionally freeing covered-up minor leaguers. He
determined that Roger Maris' 61 homers should have separate mention in the
record book because they took 162 games to achieve and, like Landis and
Chandler before him, he refused an appeal to reinstate old Buck Weaver of the
Black Sox. Beyond that, anything the owners wanted was all right with him.
     He presided over an era when commonplace air travel, widening TV markets,
and beckoning tax breaks prompted the Braves, Browns, A's, Giants, and Dodgers
to shift their franchises, when talk of a potential third big league was
enough to hustle the majors into expanding to 10 clubs each, and when minor
leagues were dying from all these invasions of their territories. The
character of club ownership was changing from the rough-and-ready old-timers
to big-money businessmen or corporations. Congress conducted hearings on
baseball's curious exemption from the antitrust laws (though without taking
action). Some prominent players were benefitting from exorbitant signing
bonuses, while others were looking for greater security and considering
unionization. Commissioner Frick saw these as league matters, outside his
jurisdiction. In 1965, full of years, he resigned with an election to the
Hall of Fame in prospect.
     The choice of William D. "Spike" Eckert as Commissioner was a mistake
and an embarrassment. A retired Air Force lieutenant general with a
distinguished record in World War II, he had not sought the job, but was
recommended by a brother officer, Curtis LeMay, bellicose boss of the
Strategic Air Command, who refused to be a candidate himself. Spike, an
amiable if diffident man, had become a business consultant with fair
administrative skills and no knowledge of baseball. He immediately was dubbed
"the Unknown Soldier."  The owners supported him with four of their number to
assist in his major areas of responsibility. Yet his ineptitude was obvious.
He was deferential to his owners, limp with his league presidents, and had no
awareness of baseball's problems or of the direction it should be headed. He
aroused national indignation by failing to cancel games after the
assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.
     In December 1968, with an organized players' strike in prospect, he was
fired. As balm, he continued to receive his salary until his death in 1971.
For this uncomfortable interlude, the owners had no one to blame but
themselves.
     When elected in 1969, Bowie Kuhn was baseball's youngest (42), tallest
(six-five), and biggest (240 pounds) Commissioner ever. He had worked the
Griffith Stadium scoreboard as a youth, graduated Princeton, and was
well-acquainted with baseball through his New York law firm which had the
National League as a client.
     Kuhn's first act was to get negotiations between the Major League Players
Association and the owner's Player Relations Committee, which had stalled over
the terms of a pension package, moving again. He helped bring about a
successful settlement which saved the 1969 season from the disruption of a
player strike.
     A positive man, though in his own words a bit stiff-necked and starchy,
Kuhn believed that the still-extraordinary powers of the Commissioner had been
granted in order to be used. Furthermore, the owners had decided that their
governance needed "restructuring," and charged him with developing a plan for
more efficient administration of their business. Kuhn and an ad hoc committee
of baseball executives and management experts proposed a further concentration
of power in the Commissioner's office. The plan was utterly rejected. Many
owners felt that, with more lines on the organization chart leading to the
Commissioner, they would be surrendering control of their franchises.
     With many important areas of baseball business excluded from his purview,
Kuhn resumed his role as persuader, counselor, and positive influence. He was
never more than that in the fierce negotiations with the MLPA and its zealous
executive director, Marvin Miller. For the owners, negotiations were
conducted by the PRC, a body of their peers. It was this group, with
confirmation by the owners as a whole, which made the landmark concessions to
union recognition, player agents, arbitration, free agency, the resulting
destruction of the reserve clause, and skyrocketing salaries. During the
50-day player strike of 1981, cries were heard for Bowie's locking both sides
in a room until they emerged with a settlement. In Landis' day, maybe, but
things no longer worked that way. By 1978, the owners had made the PRC a
separate corporation, distinctly separate from the Commissioner's office.
     Where Kuhn acted boldly--more so than any of his predecessors--was in his
dealings with owners and players. He cracked down on George Steinbrenner of
the Yankees (two-year suspension), Ted Turner of the Braves (one-year
suspension), and went head-to-head with Charlie Finley of the Oakland A's in
what seemed unfair salary wrangles with Reggie Jackson, Vida Blue, and Catfish
Hunter. In 1976, believing that Finley was liquidating, not rebuilding, his
club, Kuhn negated sales of three A's for $3.5 million.
     He met the emerging drug problem directly, despite opposition from owners
who felt that acknowledging involvement made baseball "look bad", and from the
MLPA, which resisted all disciplinary measures imposed by the Commissioner.
He returned the All-Star Game voting to the fans, presided over a new and
lucrative television contract, and brought the 1972 strike to a speedy
conclusion.
     Greater furors arose from making Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle sever
their association with baseball while working for gambling casinos, and from
acceding to television's demand for World Series games in prime-time hours at
night.
     Victims of his direct actions often became unforgiving enemies. What
might be good for baseball was not necessarily good for an owner's corporate
interests that underwrote his baseball venture. An insurrection that
threatened his re-election in 1975 was headed off by a friendly majority. But
by 1983, five National League owners were unalterably disaffected. Lingering
unhappiness with the costly 1981 strike and its aftermath was a burden. A
proposal for more equitable sharing of broadcasting revenues among rich and
poor clubs was a new and divisive problem. And there were renewed calls for
"restructuring". Magnates now said they wanted a chief executive officer--a
real corporate CEO with the business skills to guide them through the
complexities of baseball in the contemporary world. Views on the powers he
would have were mixed.
     In the voting, the National League dissidents held firm. (There were
three inconsequential "no" votes in the American League.)  With 18 out of 26
owners on his side--a 69 percent approval rating--Kuhn failed to get the
necessary three-quarters majority in each league.
     For all the complaints, Bowie Kuhn was probably the most capable
Commissioner the owners ever had, and after more years in office than anyone
but Landis, it was not easy to find an equally qualified replacement. Kuhn
overstayed his term by a year until Peter V. Ueberroth, 47 years old and fresh
from a triumph as head of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, was
unanimously elected to a five-year term in October 1984.
     In this trim, composed, and self-confident executive, the owners finally
acquired the leadership they knew was needed to deal with the complexities of
contemporary life that were engulfing the baseball business.
     Ueberroth became the game's CEO. All departments and activities reported
to him, as did the two league presidents, Dr. Bobby Brown of the American and
A. Bartlett Giamatti of the National. The Commissioner's authority to
discipline owners was greatly increased. He could transfer or deny any club's
draft choices, and the limit on club fines was upped from $5,000 to $250,000.
Reelection of the Commissioner reverted to a majority vote of the clubs, with
a required minimum of five votes from each league. His salary was raised to a
reported $450,000, nearly twice what Kuhn was paid.
     Having concentrated power in his own hands, Ueberroth then demonstrated
that his management style was to delegate responsibility. Although he took
unilateral actions to tidy up baseball operations that he found "in disarray,"
he preferred to have problems solved by the people most closely involved.
Cool and controlled in demeanor, yet insistent on high levels of performance
and not afraid to make unpopular decisions--he once described himself as "shy
and ruthless"--Ueberroth worked first to restore fiscal "sanity" to owners'
operations. Many franchises--estimates ran as high as 21 of the 26--were
losing money yet continuing to offer long-term player contracts at high wages,
even to veterans headed for the inactive list. Exchanges of information to
control this extravagance soon brought charges of collusion from the Players
Association, which complained of a suspicious absence of bidding by clubs for
free agents. Two arbitrators agreed that this was indeed the case during the
1986 and 1987 seasons. Ueberroth denied the allegation but did not dispute
the judgment, insisting that baseball must find ways to improve financial
stability before such looming problems as expansion could be faced.
Tentatively, new franchises could be awarded by 1990 and new teams take the
field by 1993.
     Internally, baseball felt the impact of two pervasive social problems of
the 1980s:  drugs and job opportunities for minorities. Each club conducted
its own rehabilitation program for drug users through its medical department.
The Players Association objected to testing as an invasion of privacy and
Ueberroth tended to agree, even though minor leaguers and front-office
personnel were tested. The Commissioner also was empowered to suspend
relapsed players for one year without pay.
     The hiring of blacks and other minorities, particularly those individuals
with distinguished baseball careers, for positions of responsibility on or off
the field remained a sensitive issue. Ueberroth contended that all clubs had
accepted the obligation, although at his departure few, if any, highly visible
jobs (such as manager, which minority groups say will prove the point of good
faith) had gone to blacks or Latinos.
     In assaults on gambling, Ueberroth worked principally behind the scenes
to eliminate club-owner investment in racing stables or tracks. In one of his
first public gestures he won approval by lifting Kuhn's rather farfetched ban
on Mantle and Mays.
     At his urging the Cubs chose to install lights at Wrigley Field, rather
than reimburse the leagues for lost night game revenues. While not involved
in the owners' negotiations with players and umpires, he kept the parties
bargaining until settlements were reached. He found a new source of income in
persuading large corporations to pay for the privilege of having their
products endorsed by Major League Baseball. He concluded enormous new TV
contracts with CBS and ESPN. And he then announced his decision to resign as
Commissioner, even if a second term were offered. Although the owners did not
always welcome his assertiveness--an outsider's voice in which they heard as
much coercion as persuasion--they felt he had significantly improved
baseball's finances, and they accepted his resignation with regret.
     National League president A. Bartlett Giamatti was chosen unanimously as
Ueberroth's successor in September 1988. The seventh Commissioner signed on
for five years beginning April 1, 1989, six months before the traditional
October date for transfers of power.
     Bart Giamatti's background was intellectually glamorous. A magna cum
laude graduate of Yale, he taught Renaissance literature there until elected
the university's president in 1978. Eight years later, after the retirement
of Charles "Chub" Feeney, he became president of the National League. His
first move was to hire his good friend, Francis T. "Fay" Vincent, Jr., a
lawyer with high-level business experience, as baseball's first-ever deputy
commissioner.
     Whether as league president or Commissioner, Giamatti was first of all a
fan, with the New Englander's inevitable devotion to the Red Sox. He
suspended players for corking bats and scuffing balls. During the 1988 season
he held firm against protests of his thirty-day suspension of Reds' Manager
Pete Rose for bumping an umpire and made an unpopular decision to enforce the
balk rule strictly. He supported "social justice" as the only remedy for
baseball's embarrassing and persistent refusal to hire minority managers,
coaches, or executives at any level of the game. He also insisted that clubs
improve the rowdy atmosphere of their parks. What charmed people most,
however, was his unabashed love of baseball and the elegance with which he
expressed his feelings--in speech or prose--for its place in American life.
He was, in truth, a Commissioner not for owners, or players, or fans, but for
the Game.
     The major action of his 154-day term was banning Pete Rose from baseball
for life. The basic question of whether Rose had engaged, as alleged, in
sports gambling was never resolved, but a six-month investigation did
establish his association with known gamblers and drug dealers. Rose agreed
to a settlement charging him with violation of Major League Rule 21, which
covers a miscellany of punishable misconduct. Rose, said Giamatti, had
"engaged in a variety of acts which have stained the game, and he must now
live with the consequences of those acts."  Under another Major League Rule,
Rose would be free to apply for reinstatement after one year.
     It was generally agreed that Commissioner Giamatti had handled an awkward
and difficult problem with distinction. Nine days later, after suffering a
heart attack at his summer home on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, he was
dead at the age of fifty-one.
     Within hours, baseball's executive council elevated Fay Vincent to Acting
Commissioner, and the owners, by unanimous vote, made him their eighth
Commissioner on September 13. If he lacked Giamatti's flair, he shared his
friend's affection and respect for baseball. He preferred grass to turf and
day games to night, liked wooden bats, disliked the designated hitter. He was
a boyhood fan of the then-Philadelphia A's, but his own athletic career was
cut short by a freak accident to his back while at Williams College. Damage
to spinal nerves left him unable to stand comfortably for more than a few
minutes at a time and forced him to walk with a cane. His qualifications for
baseball's top job, however, were bona fide:  Phi Beta Kappa at Williams, law
degree from Yale, practicing attorney, prime mover (as president and CEO) in a
turnaround of ailing Columbia Pictures, and, when the movie company was sold
to Coca-Cola, vice president of a new Coke entertainment division. He had
rejoined a law firm when Giamatti lured him into baseball. As Giamatti's
deputy he brought the record-setting television contract to a conclusion and
supervised the complex Rose investigation.
     As Commissioner he moved into the spotlight when the 1989 World Series
between Oakland and San Francisco was halted by a severe northern California
earthquake which struck minutes before Game Three at Candlestick Park. Fay
acted quickly and surely. "We want to be very sensitive to the state of the
community," he told a candlelit press conference. "Our modest little game is
not a priority."  When the Series was resumed ten days later he was widely
praised for his calm and tactful demeanor.
     As spring training for the 1990 season was about to begin, the owners'
negotiations with the players for a new collective bargaining agreement broke
down and led to a lockout. Vincent brought the two sides together, and a
settlement was achieved by mid-March, an effort appreciated less by the owners
than by the players.
     In July Vincent banned George Steinbrenner, the obstreperous owner of the
New York Yankees, from the "management or day-to-day operations" of his team.
Steinbrenner acknowledged that he had acted contrary to the best interests of
baseball, specifically by paying a known gambler $40,000 to provide damaging
information about player Dave Winfield, who had a long-standing dispute with
the owner about money allegedly owed to the outfielder's charitable
foundation.
     Like many baseball scandals, this one had ramifications aside from the
unpleasantness of seeing an owner publicly chastised by a Commissioner. It
had actually come to light during Peter Ueberroth's watch. Its clues led,
like a pond's ripples, in many directions; some were pursued, others not. But
Steinbrenner's admission of wrongdoing seemed to satisfy the Commissioner's
office, which, as it had for Rose, pronounced Steinbrenner eligible for future
reinstatement.
     Subsequent decisions were criticized not only for the actions taken, but
for how the Commissioner reached them. In June 1992, when the owners agreed
to allow the National League to expand into Colorado and Florida, Vincent
ruled that the American League would be tapped for 55 percent of the players
drafted to stock the new teams but would receive only $45 million of the $190
million total the new entities were paying as franchise fees. It could be
argued that the AL's fourteen teams were about 55 percent of the major
leagues' twenty-six, or that the NL should receive the larger reward for
letting newcomers into their club.
     But Vincent took heat for two departures from precedent. In five
previous league expansions franchise fees were awarded solely to the expanding
league, and players were drafted only from the league in which they would be
playing. Yet if the money division was unpopular, the owners had only
themselves to blame. Failing to reach an agreement on their own, they had
left Vincent to make the decision for them.
     A few days later, when there were owner objections to sale of the Seattle
Mariners to investors led by Nintendo, the Japanese video-games corporation,
Vincent helped complete the deal ($125 million, the highest amount ever paid
for a team) and was credited with preserving an ailing, small-market
franchise.
     Even so, his relations with the owners were deteriorating in an
atmosphere of "disharmony and dissension."  Fundamentally different views of
the Commissioner's role were emerging. For Fay Vincent it meant preserving
the integrity of the National Pastime for all constituencies--owners, players,
fans, and for America itself. Many owners felt otherwise. They owned the
game and Vincent was theirs to command. Hardliners on the owners' Labor
Relations Committee made this all too clear. Fearful that the Commissioner
might undermine their bargaining strategy--freely predicted as
union-busting--in forthcoming negotiations with the Players Association, they
asked Vincent to waive the power to intervene implicit under his catch-all
authority to act in "the best interests of baseball."  To their great
displeasure, he flatly refused.
     Unrest reached crisis proportions on July 6, when the Commissioner
undertook a realignment of the National League. It was ridiculous, he argued,
to have the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals in the league's eastern
division while the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds were in the west. For
the sake of geographic good sense, the teams should switch. Interestingly,
his action was not taken unilaterally, but at the request of six NL owners who
favored realignment.
     Nonetheless, consternation and outrage greeted the announcement. The
Tribune Company, owner of the Cubs, led the protest. It complained that
traditional rivalries would be disrupted and that the Commissioner had acted
arbitrarily and capriciously. It was also keenly aware that realignment would
make a serious impact on its superstation operations.
     Superstations have been a sore point in baseball for everybody who
doesn't own one. Many teams argue that wide-ranging superstation broadcasts
hurt local attendance and local television coverage. Who is going to watch
the local tailender, either in the stands or on local TV, if a superstations'
games involving top teams or a hot pennant race can be seen by anyone
subscribing to cable?  The Tribune Company, which pays handsomely to broadcast
games of seven major league teams (Cubs, White Sox, Dodgers, Angels, Yankees,
Phillies, Rockies) on one or another of its far-reaching TV stations, was not
worrying about pennant races. Putting the Cubs on the West Coast would mean
that games could not be seen in Chicago until 9 P.M., hardly prime time. Low
rates for late-hour commercials could mean heavy losses of revenue. The
Tribune Company went to court for an injunction to block the order.
     Vincent was certain that as Commissioner he had jurisdiction in such
matters as realignment. As chairman of Major League Baseball it was his sworn
duty to protect the game from encroachment and to create the best possible
conditions in which it could thrive. He did not see himself as the owners'
errand boy, or as the guardian of their outside interests, particularly those
interests in which baseball was reduced to a subordinate role. It seemed
unlikely that Bart Giamatti would have acted otherwise.
     Legally, several elements of baseball's governing documents were at
issue. The National League constitution, as revised in 1981, clearly states
that no club can be moved without its consent. The Cubs argued that this
should take precedence over anything the Commissioner is empowered to do under
the Major League Agreement.
     Not so, said Vincent. He acted under Article I of the Agreement, which
gives what courts have previously found to be "broad and unfettered" power to
act in "the best interests of baseball."
     But, said the Cubs, those powers cannot be used to interfere with
"intimate business decisions."  Furthermore, the Commissioner's power to
settle disputes between clubs (Article VII) applies only to those whose
resolution is not "expressly provided" elsewhere--viz., the National League
constitution. The District Court judge ruled that Article VII applied and
could not be superseded by Article I's "best interest" power. A preliminary
injunction was granted.
     Dissident owners now pushed for a full-dress meeting of both leagues with
their Commissioner to discuss his performance, perhaps to press for his
resignation or, failing that, to fire him. Vincent saw no reason to oblige
them. Article IX of the Agreement states that "no diminution of the
compensation or powers of . . . the Commissioner shall be made during his term
of office."  Vincent's term ran to March 31, 1994, and, he said firmly, "I
will not resign--ever."
     Vincent had some support among the owners, but the movers and shakers
were dead-set against him. On September 7, four days after an overwhelming
vote of no confidence, he resigned. It would not serve baseball well to have
its leadership endlessly involved in legal wrangling. "Owners have a duty,"
he said, "to take into consideration that they own a part of America's
national pastime--in trust. This trust sometimes required putting
self-interest second."
     Realignment pulled the trigger, but it was not the issue. It was a power
struggle in which the owners have prevailed. More malleable Commissioners
than Vincent survived this tug-of-war, but those who clung to the eroding
power the owners, with fear and trembling, once gave Judge Landis to save
their game were destined for defeat. With Vincent gone, the owners are where
they have wanted to be: in absolute control of their industry, with no umpire
to reconcile the competing claims of players or fans.
     For over a year an executive council of the two league presidents plus
eight owners  has governed the game. They, or hired or
appointed delegates, will deal with such outside relationships as those with
the Players Association, the radio and TV broadcasters, and perhaps the
Congress, as well as with such internal problems as finite sources of revenue
in an era of skyrocketing costs, the troublesome imbalance between large
market teams (LA, NY) and small (Seattle, Pittsburgh) and, perhaps most
painful, their historic inability to get along with each other.