Fay Vincent has stated that his time as
Commissioner of Major League Baseball ended in failure. If he was right, it was
a failure that was at once surprising and deeply disappointing to anyone who
cared about the game.
When Vincent was forced out of the Commissioner’s
office in September 1992, after all, it was an inglorious ending to a tenure
that began with such potential. Few, if any, previous Commissioners had
Vincent’s pedigree when he succeeded his late friend, Bart Giamatti, as
Commissioner in late 1989 - degrees from Williams College and Yale Law, years as
a top-flight securities attorney, followed by a stint as head of Columbia
Pictures (1978-82) and a vice president of Coca-Cola (1982-88).
Perhaps no Commissioner in history had the kind of
goodwill Vincent had built up, either, in both his stated determination to carry
on the beloved Giamatti’s legacy and in his steely leadership during the
earthquake-rocked 1989 World Series in the Bay area. Ask most fans, and the
Commissioner was just the kind of guy they’d want at the top - an indisputably
bright man and avowed idealist, someone who matched a self-made millionaire’s
business savvy with a passionate fan’s love of the game.
Vincent’s downfall, despite that background, has
to be traced to several impolitic clashes with his bosses among the team owners.
He made enemies at several turns, in his allocation of expansion team fees, in
his attempt to institute rational division setups, in the discipline process
against serial drug offender Steve Howe, in the investigation of Yankees owner /
blackmail victim George Steinbrenner. What many reporters and fans saw as
decisive, clear-eyed moves for the betterment of the game, the millionaires and
billionaires in the owners suites chose to perceive as rude and
high-handed.
Perhaps Vincent’s worst offence, in the eyes of
owner hard-liners like Jerry Reinsdorf and Bud Selig, came in his unwillingness
to court another labor strike. The Commissioner was in the peace camp before the
1990 season and in the long run-up to the disastrous 1994-95 clash. It was in
the midst of that latter controversy, 13 years ago, that Vincent was finally
pushed out of office through an 18-9 ‘no confidence’ vote.
Let the record show that Fay Vincent’s signature
issues (division realignment, labor/management peace, tougher drug testing) were
all adopted within a decade after his de facto firing back in ‘92. In the end,
Vincent wasn’t dismissed for substance - most owners ended up agreeing with his
decisions - but for fact that he couldn’t handle owners’ over-inflated personal
egos. For all his talent, preparation, and heart, he wasn’t a good enough
manipulator / politician and in that, at least, Vincent’s disappointing time in
the Commissioner’s office was a setback for all baseball fans.
In the years since Fay Vincent left baseball, the
67 year-old has written a well-received memoir (‘The Last Commissioner’), served
as an executive board member for the Time Warner media empire, stayed active in
charities, and attended more than a few ball games. On August 19th, he was nice
enough to invite me to his Connecticut home and share some
surprising thoughts on his past and the game’s present.
You’ve been a high-profile securities
attorney and executive for companies like Columbia Pictures, Coca-Cola and Time Warner. How
many times do the media ask you about those billion-dollar companies, rather
than fun-and-games baseball?
It’s an interesting question. I’d say three out of
four interviews are about baseball. Very seldom do I talk about the other
experiences, though the movie part comes up once in a while. I talked up at Yale
Law recently, the topic was taking risks in a legal career, and that involved
all the moves I’ve made.
But you’re perceptive. Most of the focus is still
on baseball.
In your time in office, you had to deal with the fallout
from the owners’ collusion case from the mid-1980’s. How do you feel about the
issue today?
I think it’s been the ultimate disaster in the
modern game, because it conditioned all the labor disasters of the ‘90’s. It’s
still polluting the relationship between owners and the union, because the
owners have failed to understand how bitter the Players Association has been
about it.
To this day, the clubs have never admitted
they engaged in collusion. If you ask Bud Selig, ‘Was there collusion?’, he’ll
never answer the question. He’ll never admit it. He used to yell at me when I
said, ‘A) There was collusion, and B) It’s never going to happen on my watch’.
Selig would say, ‘I don’t want you to ever admit it’.
Well, it’s said that more efficient front office moves
may help keep salaries in line to players’ production nowadays. Maybe the owners
can set salaries in line with revenues through the
marketplace.
Yes, but I think the owners are still capable of
colluding. It’s because they may see no other way to solve the problem of salary
inflation. It’s a last ditch self-help effort.
Actually, it’s inconceivable to me that owners
aren’t talking to each other about what they’re bidding on players. I remember,
I sat with two owners once and, right in the middle of the conversation, they
started talking about a free agent. One said to the other, ‘I’m not going to
sign that S.O.B., he’s too expensive’. I said to him, ‘Why don’t you guys
collude right under my nose?’ He says, ‘No, we’re not colluding, we’re just
talking about our business’.
What’s all that about? It’s price
fixing.
If you think about it, the guys who are running
baseball today, [former Brewers owner Bud] Selig and [White Sox owner Jerry]
Reinsdorf, were the ones who organized collusion in the first place. The
critical piece of evidence in the case was a piece of paper that [Phillies
owner] Bill Giles kept - it was a note
not to sign [free agent Lance] Parrish, the catcher. That turned out to
be a $280 million piece of paper, so everyone criticized Giles for keeping that
smoking gun. What they didn’t often say is that Reinsdorf was on the other end
of the conversation that produced the note. He was the one who said, ‘don’t you
dare sign Parrish; that will undermine our joint effort at collusion’.
Now, Selig and Reinsdorf are still there. What do
you think?
Mr. Selig, of course, became your successor in 1992 and
ended up leading the game into the 1994-95 strike. Do you think it could have
been avoided if you had stayed in office?
There are two views on that. I don’t know which
one is correct.
I think I failed to convince the owners that there
was no chance to break the union, then or ever. It’s been one of the great
disappointments of my life.
The other point of view says that the owners felt
that this is the apocalypse; we’re desperate, we’re going broke, if we don’t get
this union under control, we’re going out of business. That they felt the strike
was the war to end wars. That they had to try one last effort to break the
union.
Once you resigned in 1992, Mr. Selig and a negotiator
named Dick Ravitch seemed to take a hard line in the union
negotiations.
He was brought in and said [to the owners], ‘I’ll
get you everything you want, but you got to get rid of Vincent first’. He wanted
to be Commissioner, of course, but he didn’t know anything about baseball.
(laughs) In his first few days on the job, he asked [then Deputy Commissioner]
Steve Greenberg, ‘which league has the designated hitter?’.
That tells you all you need to know about Dick
Ravitch.
And you know, the agreement that came after the
’94 strike made no significant
changes in baseball’s labor relationship. None. I said to Selig, ‘was it worth
it? Did you get anything?’. He said, ‘absolutely not, Fay. We got killed. We got
nothing’.
Do you think the owners have been less inclined to force
a strike as a result?
Maybe [Selig] learned from the ’94 strike. Maybe
he learned that you’re not going to break the union, you’re going to have to
take little steps.
I’d been saying that all along. I think I turned
out to be right about the way to deal with the union, but I was terribly wrong
in that I couldn’t persuade the owners to listen.
Apart from labor relations, one of the major
controversies from your tenure involved drugs, specifically the Steve Howe case.
Do you think recreational drugs are still an important issue in the game?
I don’t know. I do know that the union was
impossible to deal with on the issue - when I threw Steve Howe out of the game
after seven drug policy violations, they contested the decision and got it
overturned [in arbitration]. Absolutely ridiculous.
I don’t know what the cocaine problem is in
baseball. My guess is that it’s probably there to some extent, as it is in
society in general. I have no idea to how far of an extent.
Another kind of drug testing issue, one that’s come up
lately, relates to testing for steroids. Where do you see the
issue?
We don’t know what happened because we don’t have
the facts. Who knows what kinds of decisions were made? Absent some really big
investigation, we’ll never know.
My guess is that baseball, in the ‘90’s, knew that
steroids were a big problem, but baseball chose to do nothing. Now, Selig can
say, with some justification, ‘we couldn’t do anything without the union and the
union wasn’t willing to permit testing’. But he certainly wasn’t yelling and
screaming about the subject when the game was booming.
Do you think the union was wrong in opposing drug
testing?
The union leadership is very left-wing, very civil
liberties-oriented, very protective of individual rights. Almost Marxist, in a
way.
The players have had a much simpler view. They’ve
wanted to start testing, move on, clean the decks, and play some ball. Some of
the ball players - guys like Tom Glavine - decided that the union leadership was
wrong. When they reopened the Basic Agreement to permit more testing, it was the
first time, in my experience, that the union leaders have been pushed aside. It
was unheard of.
Another reason why you’ll be remembered in the game was
your role in Pete Rose’s exile. Do you think he’ll ever be eligible for the Hall
of Fame?
Rose is his own worst enemy, by a huge margin.
He’s a terrible example; a guy who got some bad advice and made the wrong choice
at every fork in the road. I think his case is pretty much a dead issue at this
point.
To me, Rose’s unattractive personal character -
his gambling, his troubles with the IRS, his felony conviction, all of that - is
sublimated by his thought that he was bigger than the game and above the rules.
Bart and I proved he wasn’t.
The Minor Leagues’ increased attendance during the last
decade or so has been partly attributed to the 1991 Baseball Facilities
Standards passed while you were in office. What was your role in that that
process?
I’d like to take more credit for that. That was
really done in cooperation between the Major Leagues and the organization that
runs Minor League Baseball. I had very little to do with it, except support
it.
Before the Standards were passed, many Minor
League fields were badly maintained and had poor lighting. I mean, these kids
were taking their lives into their hands, and no one wants to sign a player to
some huge bonus, ship him off to Rookie League, then watch him break his leg by
stepping into a gopher hole in centerfield.
The basic objective was to ensure that all
facilities were up to a very high standard for the young ball players. You may
be right; it may have led to a gain in the minors’ popularity as well.
I wish I could have had more success in another
area in Minor League Baseball, and that was in umpires’ pay and treatment. They
were treated like indentured servants - they were expected to survive on tiny,
tiny salaries. Say, $15,000 for six months work. $20,000. A man can’t live on
that. And you can umpire 10, 15 years before you make the Majors.
I think that kind of treatment is still a major
issue in baseball. It’s not the highest problem, but more should be done. Major
League Baseball should run its own umpiring schools. It should provide financial
aid to talented young umpires, particularly minority umpires. It should recruit
college umpires.
In reading your past comments, I know you’ve been
critical of the whole structure of the Minor League
system…
Well, Major League Baseball spends a fortune on
Minor League teams and they don’t need them all. The average team probably has
about 200 players under contract, 40 of them on the expanded Major League roster
and another 150, 160 or so in the Minors. Now, out of all those Minor Leaguers,
at any given time, there may be 15, 16, max - who are real big league prospects.
The rest are there to play catch with guys who have a future.
Why would the ball clubs go through all that
expense? It makes no sense. I mean, if you were GE or Coca Cola, you wouldn’t
run player development the way it’s run in baseball. It doesn’t make any
business sense.
It’s been my feeling that some of the owners
should get rid of their player development programs. They should take 40 players
on the big league roster and, maybe, 25 others in a league in
Florida or
Arizona. The players won’t be in
Norfolk or East Jesus, they’ll be
under control in a central place where the teams can work them out and keep an
eye on them.
Think about it. They could play a lot more
games, around the clock. They’d have a lot more instruction, good weather, first
rate facilities. It makes a lot of sense.
Why do you think the current system has
survived?
The country loves it. The teams aren’t sure if all
that Minor League attendance doesn’t bolster Major League attendance. They may
be right about that. I’m not so sure.
The other issue is political. If the teams ever
try to do something about the Minor Leagues, they’ll run into a firestorm in
Congress. The politicians are very anxious to preserve their local Minor League
franchises.
You know, when Congress used to threaten me with
[the possible revocation of MLB’s] antitrust [exemption], I used to tell them,
‘Look, if you push hard enough, we’ll close down your local Minor League team’.
I used to tell [Senator] Arlen Specter [of
Pennsylvania], who was a very
difficult fellow, ‘if you’re responsible for a Minor League team’s shutdown, I
don’t think that will be a political plus for you’. He knew I was
right.
Baseball’s antitrust immunity is basically a red
herring, but it does have several important consequences. One of which is the
fact that it supports the Minor League structure.
One of the other notable facts about career is the fact
that you’ve been inducted into the Negro Leagues’ Hall of Fame. Along with
Branch Rickey, you’re the only white executive in the
Hall.
As a matter of fact, the Hall of Fame in
Cooperstown just asked me to chair a committee reviewing
the remaining outstanding ballplayers from the Negro Leagues, to see if any of
them belong in the Hall.
I think one of the turning points of my life is
when Joe Garagiola, who is a good friend, came to me and said, ‘we ought to
honor the old ballplayers from the Negro Leagues. We ought to have some sort of
an affair at Cooperstown to honor them and welcome them
back as important figures in baseball history’. We did that, and it was a
spectacular weekend. There were about 75 Negro Leaguers there, and I’d say
two-thirds of them have since passed away.
I got to know a lot of the old guys at that
weekend, some of them I got to know very well. The late Joe Black was a good
friend. Buck O’Neil is a friend. I met a guy named Slick Suratt, who never
played in the big leagues, but he was a very good ball player in his time. He
became a friend.
It became a bit of a cause for me, because they
had ignored by Major League Baseball - they didn’t get any pensions, any health
benefits. Len Coleman, the former president of the National League, worked to
get them a pension. It made a big difference to many of them and I’m proud of
that.
Do you ever see yourself getting formally involved in
baseball again?
Well, I’ve been asked to come and advise in an
executive position, but I think that’s behind me. I’m living a really wonderful
life and I’m very happy in it.
I think I had a good run in baseball. The people
who probably benefited the most from my time in the game were the underdogs -
the umpires, the Negro Leaguers - and I’m proud of that. Circumstances were
tough and I failed in some things. Some of it was my fault, but most people know
I tried.
How would you like to be
remembered?
That I always loved the game and tried to do right
by it.
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