Fay Vincent Relaxes in Job Because He Likes It

A question and answer session with baseball commissioner Fay Vincent:

Q: Has this job been what you thought it would be?

Vincent: It’s much better than I ever dreamed, in a sense that it’s the most wonderful way to spend time that I could ever have imagined. If you have to get up in the morning and go to work, this is the job that you want.

It’s better than not working, because I don’t have to work. If I didn’t want to work, I wouldn’t be here. It’s a terrific amount of fun. And maybe it wouldn’t be for all people. But for me, I love baseball. I don’t think anybody should be here who doesn’t have a great affection for the game itself, who doesn’t enjoy going to the game and sitting through rain delays. If you don’t like baseball you shouldn’t be working for baseball.

It’s as close to perfection in terms of a way to spend time as I can imagine. And I say that given the perception that is widely held that I had a terribly tumultuous and difficult year. I don’t view it that way. I think in this position there’s going to be problems. People say, ‘Well, you’ve had a bad year.’ And I say, ‘Look ahead.’ Now we have the umpire negotiations coming, we have a major negotiation with the minor leagues on the player development contract, we’ve got expansion. Those are three issues I’m going to have to deal with that are not easy. But that’s what the job involves. On the other hand, tonight I go out to Shea, I can hang around, talk a little baseball, have some fun, that’s fantastic.

Q: But it has been an extraordinary year, wouldn’t you say?

Vincent: Well, for me it hasn’t in a sense that it is about what you expect. I think the only surprise to me was that the pace that the issues came was a more compacted time frame than I might have expected. I might have expected a little more distance there. It turns out they come like waves. There’s not much distance between the waves. They just keep coming.

Q: But these were big waves.

Vincent: Yes, big waves. But I think there are big waves coming. See, I don’t believe that there’s clear water in this job. I don’t think we’re going to get to easy going. I just don’t think it’s going to happen.

Q: You have a unique set of characteristics that allow you to say this job is not as punishing as it appears, in that it seems you don’t owe favors to anybody in this job, you don’t seem to have an ego need and you probably don’t need the job.

Vincent: Yeah, I think you’re on to something. It is very helpful to me to be in the position I am in both financially and professionally. I came to Columbia (Pictures) broke and left financially independent into the third generation.

Having that advantage means I don’t have an agenda, if you will. I’m not trying to achieve the next job, I’m not running for anything. It’s very clear. But if it becomes obvious that somebody can do this better, I’ll go to Cape Cod and do something else for a while.

I’m willing to take direction and criticism. But, when push comes to shove, everybody knows I’m doing it because I want to do it. And if the day comes when I don’t want to do it or somebody persuades me that I should no longer do it, I will be a very easy fellow to deal with.

Q: How does (New York Yankee General Manager) Gene Michael resist George Steinbrenner?

Vincent: If Steinbrenner calls Michael, Michael comes to me and says, ‘He did it.’ If they talk about a subject that is not permitted or Michael is worried, the best thing to do is call me up. It’s what I told George he should have done when he was dealing with (Howard) Spira. If George would have come here before he paid Spira, we would have had a different situation. He could have come to me and said, ‘I’ve got this problem. I think I’m being extorted’ -- taking his view -- ‘I’m not sure I want to make the payment. What do you think I should do?’ And I asked him why he didn’t come here and he didn’t give me much of an answer.

Q: Is the Dave Winfield situation over?

Vincent: My view on the Winfield situation is that I have looked into it and had people look into what’s been put in front of us. If somebody has information that I don’t have, I will evaluate it and pursue it. That is true not just in Mr. Winfield’s case, but anybody’s case. So I mean, I don’t know if it’s over. I have nothing that leads me to believe there is anything significant that should be looked into that has not been previously looked into.

Q: How do you distinguish what Winfield did with his relationship with Spira and what you thought was a mistake by Steinbrenner?

Vincent: It’s very simple. David Winfield dropped Spira and the reason Spira went to Mr. Steinbrenner is because he was furious at Winfield for telling him to get lost. Winfield did not want to deal with him. When he learned what Spira was, he said he’d have nothing more to do with him. That’s a significant difference. Secondly, there is no credible evidence that Winfield knew that Spira was a gambler.

Q: When you sit down with Steinbrenner in February, will the agreement be changed in any way or is the meeting just to outline, ‘You can go to X number of games.’

Vincent: What I said was he was totally free to ask me to sit down and ask for permission to go to games in ways that were different than from just going as a fan and sitting in the stands. I have no commitment to giving such permission. That will have to await the future.

Q: Are you still puzzled what his thinking was? Have you figured that out? You were going to act otherwise.

Vincent: (I) have not complained about the agreement I signed. I understood what I was doing.

Q: The scenario where Steve Kaufman, his lawyer, stuck his arm in the elevator, that’s true?

Vincent: Yeah, because they were screwing around. Enough’s enough. Either you sign the agreement or you don’t. I couldn’t care less. I don’t need anybody to sign the suspension. What does that mean?

Q: But there was no haste, was there? That perhaps George didn’t know what he was signing?

Vincent: I mean, he’s represented by three lawyers. They were here from 9 in the morning to 8 at night. It should not have taken that long. My view was -- and I told them they weren’t prepared -- if they had an agreement they wanted they should have brought it over here, prepared it in advance. They didn’t do that. They didn’t do their work.

We wrote the agreement, Steve (Greenberg, deputy commissioner) and I. I’m happy to do that. But if you don’t want to sign it, don’t sign it. I don’t care. I mean, I offered them that. If they don’t want it, terrific. I’ll do what I have to do. I don’t need his agreement to anything. If he wanted an agreement, fine. I offered him one. He didn’t have to sign it. There was no coercion.

Q: You had called the retorts from his camp “cymbals crashing in the night.” Is that over?

Vincent: I don’t know. They’re still out there trying to persuade you to write about it. There’s nothing to write about. They’re trying to say the investigation wasn’t fair. Why did he sign? He accepted the findings and pled guilty. When you plead guilty you can’t complain about the process. It’s over. That’s it.

I mean, the (Pete) Rose people were much smarter. When they pled guilty and they took their punishment, they stopped. Because they recognized if you want to come back to baseball there’s no point in banging around and doing all this. Even the Rose people understood that. These people don’t understand that. He (Steinbrenner) can’t go to a ballgame next year without my permission. Is this helpful?

Q: There is also speculation that he wanted to preserve his position on the U.S. Olympic committee.

Vincent: After reading my opinion, he thought he was going to preserve his position? Read the opinion. I mean, if you sit on the Olympic committee and read my opinion, do you want that?

Q: It’s strange to see someone of this magnitude brought down by essentially a twerp, a low life.

Vincent: Brought down by himself. The mechanism is not significant. Like Nixon and all these figures, it’s a little event, I mean, a two-bit break-in at Watergate. The event is accidental. The essential problem is much more important.

Q: There do seem to be a lot of similarities.

Vincent: And with a lot of other historical figures. They stumble over the little things.

Q: You get caught in something else, something you hadn’t covered for.

Vincent: Yeah, that’s why tax fraud is so prevalent. It’s complicated and people don’t pay much attention to it. They’re doing a lot of big crimes, and then the little crime of cheating on their taxes is the one they do time for. I can’t say I was surprised by that. I don’t think the whole story is over. The whole affair is moved from my world to other peoples’ worlds. The real story is now in Florida in those things, the Spira case out here. They don’t involve me.

Q: There was a lot of concern over the past winter about smaller-market teams being able to survive. Is that still a concern among the owners?

Vincent: Yeah, it’s a concern. I don’t know the answer to that. Because look what’s going on in baseball. The White Sox have a very low payroll and are doing terrific. Pittsburgh may win the pennant and they’ve got a bunch of guys they’re not paying any particular money because nobody thought they were any good and they turned out to be pretty good. The guys who went out and spent a huge amount of money are not doing so great: Kansas City, California, the poor Braves spent all that money for (Nick) Esasky. It’s hard to find a major free-agent signing last year, other than (Tony) Pena, that you would really say has been a huge success for the signing team.

Now the question I have is, if I’m running a team, what lesson do I draw? I mean, am I going to be less aggressive? I don’t know the answer to that.

Q: What baseball appears to have lost is the inner-city participation.

Vincent: You’re right. In two respects. One is kids playing and two is people going. I go to the ballpark and I look and I see an almost totally white audience. And I say to myself in Detroit or Boston, ‘Why is that?’ And I talk to (National League president) Bill White and he says it’s economics. But my research says it’s not economics. Because the black man is not complaining about price. The resistance is much more fundamental. They’re not comfortable associating with ‘a white man’s game.’ I’m telling you that’s a big challenge for baseball.

Q: How is the minority hiring coming?

Vincent: I think it’s a big issue in baseball. There’s no black general manager. Take aside financial, business operations, marketing -- because they’re a lot of minorities out there; we would be statistically sound -- but if you put baseball people out there you’ll find a woman or two, a black or two. Not many. Again, we’re making progress. But we’ve got a long way to go.

Q: What can baseball do?

Vincent: You lobby and cajol. I had an owner in here yesterday and he’s talking about hiring someone. And I said, ‘It would be great if you hired a black. Look hard at minorities.’ And he said he would. What you do is what you do in every business. You have to work at it. We have consulting firms that travel around and push it. Most of all we have moral suasion. The issue has to be pushed and pushed and pushed.

Q: Is there a fear of the Yankees moving to New Jersey?

Vincent: I don’t know. I think the city will come to its senses. I hope it will. There’s no question there’s a problem up there. I drive up there the way you do. Sometimes you get stuck there along that drive, around 155th Street, there will be policemen there. And you can just spend a half an hour getting from the exit on the Deegan to the ballpark. That should be fixed.

I went up there last Fourth of July and I was solicited by all sorts of ladies and men. It’s not a nice thing to happen to you on the Fourth of July on your way to the ballpark at 11 in the morning. I think there are problems. The parking is a problem. But I hope the Yankees and the city will do what’s necessary to fix them. There are serious problems.

Q: Did you have, in the players’ terms, a good year?

Vincent: Oh, I don’t think in those terms. Look, I think the best I can do is try the best that I can. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I’ve always felt that if I tried and did the best that I could ... I don’t have any regrets about the amount of effort or energy application. I do the best I can and let someone else evaluate.