Vincent Resigns as Commissioner : Baseball: He says that he is confident he would have won a court fight, but quits ‘in the best interest of baseball.’

Questioning whether the owners know what they want in a commissioner or how they want to restructure the office, Fay Vincent resigned Monday rather than forcing the owners to fire him and begin a protracted legal fight.

Reached at his vacation home on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, Vincent said he would have gone to court confident of winning and gleaned “great personal satisfaction” from that victory, “but what may have been right for me wasn’t right for baseball. My resignation is in the best interest of baseball.”

Baseball’s eighth commissioner gave up the position Monday after owners had voted, 18-9-1, on Thursday in favor of a resolution expressing lack of confidence in his leadership and asking for his resignation.

A quarterly owners meeting will begin Wednesday, and sources who declined to be identified said that the owners were prepared to make Vincent the first commissioner ever to be fired if he failed to resign by then.

In an Aug. 20 letter to the owners, Vincent had said he would never resign and would fight “any inappropriate action” by the owners. He cited the Major League Agreement, which states that a commissioner’s power cannot be diminished during his term of office.

In deciding to resign, however, Vincent cited overwhelming support for the resolution and said it would have been impossible to continue governing “people who did not want me to govern them.”

“A fight based solely on principle does not justify the disruption when there is not greater support among ownership for my views,” Vincent wrote in a three-page letter to the owners Monday. “I cannot govern as commissioner without the consent of owners to be governed. I do not believe that consent is now available to me.”

Vincent also said a long legal fight would accomplish nothing if in March of 1994, when his term ended and the owners met to elect a new commissioner, they rewrote the Major League Agreement and restructured the office to create what Vincent called “a figurehead commissioner.”

“This is certainly the goal of some,” he wrote. “And while it is bad for baseball, I cannot prevent that change. I can only hope owners realize that a strong commissioner, a person of experience and stature in the community, is integral to baseball.

“I hope they learn this lesson before too much damage is done to the game, to the players, umpires and others who work in the game, and most importantly, to the fans.”

Vincent’s resignation means that the Major League Executive Council will take charge of the office. Normally, the executive council would appoint a search committee to recommend a successor, who would require approval of three-fourths of the owners in both the American and National leagues.

However, Jerry Reinsdorf, co-owner of the Chicago White Sox and a leader of the Vincent opposition, said it would be his recommendation that the council delay a hiring. He wants the restructuring committee called for in the resolution of last Thursday to first present a report, which Reinsdorf predicted would take at least a month.

“There is no point looking for a successor until we know what kind of a position we are asking him to fill,” Reinsdorf said.

The council is composed of the two league presidents and eight club owners and executives, including Jackie Autry of the Angels. Autry, who supported the resignation resolution, declined to comment Monday other than to issue a statement saying that she and her husband, owner Gene Autry, wished Vincent well.

Among possible candidates to succeed Vincent, depending on how the office is restructured, are Ron Brown, chairman of the Democratic Party; Paul Beeston, president of the Toronto Blue Jays; Richard Ravitch, president of the owners’ Player Relations Committee; former American League president Lee MacPhail, and deputy commissioner Steve Greenberg.

Reinsdorf said he favored Greenberg, but a National League owner who declined to be identified predicted a shake-up throughout the commissioner’s office and said Greenberg’s position was tenuous.

Vincent’s resignation, in the opinion of many, also ensures that the owners will elect to reopen collective bargaining negotiations with the players’ union in December, take a hard line aimed at eliminating salary arbitration and stage a prolonged spring lockout if the union resists.

Don Fehr, executive director of the players union, said he would not comment on Vincent’s resignation. He added, however, that the union has been advising players since last spring that the owners intended to stage a lockout next spring and that the players should be prepared. The union has been putting licensing revenue into an emergency fund.

However, Brett Butler of the Dodgers said he didn’t believe there would be a lockout because the owners would risk too much revenue from the two expansion teams. But he agreed that Vincent’s resignation would affect the owners’ approach to the next talks, hardening their position.

“Now they have things the way they want them,” he said of the owners.

“Before, they didn’t. Vincent wasn’t a puppet. He was paid by the owners, but he wasn’t swayed by the owners or the players. I guess he decided not to fight it anymore.”

Vincent’s conciliatory intervention in the stalled negotiations and lockout of last season angered many owners, and his recent refusal to yield the right to intervene in labor negotiations added to the majority disenchantment with him.

Those last collective talks were only one of the many problems that confronted Vincent during a term that began on Sept. 13, 1989, with his elevation from the deputy’s position to complete the term of the late Bart Giamatti, his good friend.

Vincent had to cope with the San Francisco earthquake during the 1989 World Series, labor disputes with the umpires as well as players, a decision on how expansion revenue would be divided, a Chicago Cub suit challenging his realignment of the National League, the antipathy of the superstations as he attempted to curtail their increasing power, the suspension of Steve Howe, a change in the Hall of Fame rules to prohibit Pete Rose from appearing on the ballot and a booming escalation in salaries, threatening the industry’s financial stability.

Each of those issues divided the owners, who seemed to most fear the possibility of his re-entry into the next collective talks with the players union, his ability to handle the new TV negotiations, and his reluctance or inability to develop a consensus among the owners on critical issues.

Dodger President Peter O’Malley said that Vincent’s resignation “was the only sensible thing to do.”

One of the executive council’s first acts, Reinsdorf predicted, will be to rescind Vincent’s realignment order, which will enable the Cubs to drop their suit.

Talking by phone, Vincent said he did not second-guess any of his decisions and was proud of the industry’s advances in many areas not often talked about. He cited minority hiring, global marketing and the introduction of inner-city youth programs.

He said he reached his decision to resign without hearing from any of the nine owners who supported him Thursday. Asked if the owners really know what they wanted in a commissioner, he said:

“You wonder, don’t you. Every (commissioner) has been criticized and pushed aside. They’ve never had a commissioner they wanted to keep. It’s a difficult job and a very political job.

“I mean, Marvin Miller (former director of the players union) likes to say that the commissioner doesn’t have any power, but he has a great deal of power, and I used it. It’s hard to do the number of things I had to do and be popular, but I didn’t think popularity was the issue.

“I tried to do what was best for baseball. If they wanted the type commissioner they can control, they had the wrong person.”

Vincent follows Happy Chandler and Gen. William Eckert as the third commissioner to be forced out before the end of his term.

Vincent said that he doubted that a corporate structure in which a chief executive officer answered to a board of directors composed of the 28 owners could function effectively.

“I just don’t think they know what they want,” he said. “If I felt they did, maybe this decision would have been easier for me.”

Vincent, who will receive severance, has served as an attorney with the Securities Exchange Commission and was president of Columbia Pictures and Coca-Cola before becoming commissioner. He said he would try to travel before looking for a new position.

He added that he will follow the example of former commissioner Peter Ueberroth and no longer talk publicly about baseball or baseball issues.