Fay Vincent

On October 17, 1989, Vincent[17] sat in a field box behind the left dugout at San Francisco's Candlestick Park. At 5:04 p.m., just prior to Game 3 of the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics, the 6.9 Mw Loma Prieta earthquake hit with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). At approximately 5:35 p.m., after coming to the conclusion that the power couldn't be restored before sunset, Vincent ordered the game to be postponed.[18] According to Vincent, he had already made the decision to postpone Game 3 without telling anybody first. As a result, the umpires filed a formal protest of Vincent's decision. However, the game had to be postponed due to trouble with gas lines as well as the power issue.[19]

The World Series ultimately resumed after a 10-day postponement[20] (and some initial conflict between Vincent and San Francisco mayor Art Agnos, who felt that the World Series ought to have been delayed much longer) on October 27, 1989. While presenting the World Series Trophy to the Athletics, who wound up winning the World Series in a four-game sweep, Vincent summed up the 1989 World Series as a "Remarkable World Series in many respects."

In February 1990, owners announced that spring training would not be starting as scheduled. This occurred after MLBPA Executive Director Donald Fehr became afraid that the owners would institute a salary cap. Fehr believed that a salary cap could possibly restrict the number of choices free agents could make and a pay-for-performance scale would eliminate multiyear contracts. The lockout, which was the seventh work stoppage in baseball since 1972, lasted 32 games and wiped out almost all of spring training.[21]

Vincent worked with both the owners and MLBPA, and on March 19, 1990, Vincent was able to announce a new Basic Agreement (which raised the minimum major league salary from $68,000 to $100,000 and established a six-man study committee on revenue sharing). As a consequence for the lockout, Opening Day for the 1990 season was moved back a week to April 9, and the season was extended by three days to accommodate the normal 162-game schedule.[22]

On July 30, 1990, Vincent banned New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner from baseball for life after Steinbrenner paid Howard Spira, a small-time gambler, $40,000 for "dirt" on his outfielder Dave Winfield after Winfield sued Steinbrenner for failing to pay his foundation the $300,000 guaranteed in his contract.[23] Steinbrenner was eventually reinstated in 1992 for a return in the spring of 1993.[24]

It came out later from Vincent that he had wanted to suspend Steinbrenner for only two years. It was Steinbrenner who asked for a lifetime ban as he was tired of baseball and wanted to help run the US Olympic effort (at the time, he was vice president of the US Olympic Committee) while his family could run the team around his absence. Steinbrenner knew he could not run the Olympic effort if he was suspended, so he asked for a lifetime ban, which he received after 11 hours of negotiation. Steinbrenner then applied for (and received) reinstatement after two years.[25][26]

On June 24, 1992, Vincent permanently suspended pitcher Steve Howe for repeated drug offenses.[27] Vincent was incensed when upper Yankee management (Buck Showalter, Gene Michael, and Jack Lawn) agreed to testify on Howe's behalf, and threatened them with expulsion from the game:

You have effectively resigned from baseball by agreeing to appear at that hearing.... you should have left your conscience and your principles outside the door.

[28]

The three men testified for Howe as promised, and remained active in baseball. Three months later, Vincent was removed from his job as commissioner. An arbitrator overturned Vincent's suspension of Howe on November 11, 1992.[29]

Fay Vincent on the effects of collusion:[7]

The Union basically doesn’t trust the Ownership because collusion was a $280 million theft by Selig and Reinsdorf of that money from the players. I mean, they rigged the signing of free agents. They got caught. They paid $280 million to the players. And I think that’s polluted labor relations in baseball ever since it happened. I think it’s the reason Fehr has no trust in Selig.

In June 1991, Vincent declared that the American League would receive $42 million of the National League's $190 million in expansion revenue and that the AL would provide players in the National League expansion draft (involving the Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins).[30]

In an attempt to win support in the American League and balance the vote, Vincent decreed that the AL owners were entitled to 22 percent of the $190 million take. This decision marked the first time in expansion history that leagues were required to share expansion revenue or provide players for another league's expansion draft. He said the owners expanded to raise money to pay their collusion debt.[7]

Just prior to leaving office, Vincent had plans to realign the National League. Vincent wanted the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals to switch divisions with the Cincinnati Reds and Atlanta Braves.[31] When Major League Baseball realigned in 1969, this geographical anomaly was created in order to give the Chicago and St. Louis franchises more games during television's prime time schedule. National League president Bill White warned Vincent that realigning without league approval would be in violation of the National League Constitution.[32]

Many thought this plan would be beneficial to the league as a whole, especially by building a regional rivalry between the new franchise in Miami and the Atlanta Braves. The Cubs, however, opposed the move, suggesting that fans in the Central Time Zone would be forced to watch more games originating on the West Coast with later broadcast times (had the realignment included the use of a balanced schedule, the Cubs would have actually played more games against teams outside their division).

On July 17, 1992, the Chicago Cubs sued Vincent[33] and asked the U.S. District Court in Chicago for a preliminary injunction to prevent implementation, which was granted two weeks later. After Vincent's attorneys appealed, oral arguments were scheduled for August 30 of that year. Ultimately, Vincent resigned before the litigation was scheduled to resume, so as a result, the Cubs dropped their suit.

Although Vincent's vision never really came into fruition, Major League Baseball did in fact realign in 1994, albeit in the form of three divisions in each league, and the addition of an expanded playoff format with the Wild Card.[34]

His relationship with baseball's owners was always tenuous at best; he resigned in 1992 after the owners gave him an 18–9 no confidence vote.[35] The owners were still angry at Vincent over his intervention during the 1990 lockout. The owners were also disappointed by dwindling television ratings in light of a $1.2 billion, four-year deal with CBS[36] (which ultimately cost the network approximately $500 million) beginning in 1990 (Vincent's first full season as commissioner) and upwardly spiraling salaries. (It is also important to note that CBS itself contributed to decreasing ratings thanks to the haphazard scheduling of Game of the Week broadcasts during the regular season to the point that fans grew tired of tuning into no baseball on summer Saturdays.) The owners accused Vincent of acting in a high-handed manner, especially in the Howe affair; Vincent reportedly "believes that the game is bigger than one person and he’s not afraid to take a controversial stance and stick with it" even if it was against public opinion. Vincent also "didn't see himself as a lackey whose job it was to massage the owner’s egos and do their bidding".[8]

The leaders in the movement to oust Vincent were members of what The Sporting News later dubbed The Great Lakes Gang:[37]

• Bud Selig, president of the Milwaukee Brewers;
• Jerry Reinsdorf, chairman of the Chicago White Sox;
• Stanton Cook, head of the Tribune Co., which owned the Chicago Cubs;
• Carl Pohlad, owner of the Minnesota Twins;
• Peter O'Malley, the longtime majority-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers
• William Bartholomay, longtime part-owner and Chairman of the Atlanta Braves

In his farewell, Vincent said

To do the job without angering an owner is impossible. I can't make all twenty-eight of my bosses happy. People have told me I'm the last commissioner. If so, it's a sad thing. I hope they [the owners] learn this lesson before too much damage is done.

Vincent was never able to complete the five-year term that he had inherited from Bart Giamatti. Vincent contended that Major League Baseball made a huge mistake by not appointing his deputy commissioner Steve Greenberg — the son of the Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg — as Commissioner. Vincent was replaced on an interim basis by Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig, who was named the permanent replacement in 1998 and whose family continued to maintain ownership over the Brewers.[38]