Too Good for Game He Loves

Fay Vincent was too good for major league baseball.

If that sounds like a backhanded compliment, apologies are herewith extended. Vincent was a rare visitor on the deck of this ship of fools--principled, uncompromising, selfless, decisive, a man of vision and introspection who truly believed in what he was saying when he claimed he was acting in “the best interests of baseball,” rather than simply hiding behind it as some Nixonian shield against the barbs and the arrows.

Name one major league owner who can match that description, adjective for adjective.

Owners, most of them Capitalists in the basest sense of the term, act only in the best interests of the owners. Their credo: Greed is good, greedier is better and, gee, those players’ salaries are out of control and a threat to the stability of the sport only until I have the chance to buy Bobby Bonilla for $30 million.

Collusion wasn’t good for baseball. But it was good for the owners.

Spring-training lockouts weren’t good for baseball. But they were good for the owners.

Moving the Giants to St. Petersburg and keeping the Cubs in the National League East, against all natural laws of geography, isn’t necessarily good for baseball, either. But Bob Lurie and Chicago Tribune Co. want it to happen, it is good for those owners, so Lurie and the Tribune board were among the 18 votes cast in no-confidence of Vincent last week.

It has been wrongly reported that the owners have no idea of what they want in a commissioner--never have and never will. That’s wrong, because the owners’ design for the prototypal baseball commissioner was revealed this summer, and what the owners want is a nodding supplicant who will bring an end to arbitration, force the players to accept a salary cap, milk the networks for more television money, impose pay-per-view on the already wallet-weary fan, take a long Bermuda vacation during the next umpires’ contract negotiations, add three tiers of playoffs to the postseason, make the World Series best-of-11, let the Giants move to Bali if they want and let the Cubs secede to the National League North, where they can play all of their games in prime time.

The owners’ short list of preferred candidates:

1. Santa Claus.

2. The Tooth Fairy.

3. George Bush. He’ll promise anything to anyone in order to get elected. And, after November, he’ll be looking for a new job.

Vincent held office during three of the most turbulent years in the sport’s history, little of it his own doing.

He inherited mop-up duty in the Pete Rose mess when Bart Giamatti died and, less than two months into his term, presided over the first World Series rocked by natural disaster. He saw Yankee pinstripes in his nightmares--What to do about George Steinbrenner? How to discipline Steve Howe? He was broadsided by umpire and player strikes. He was summoned to play Solomon when the owners couldn’t decide how to divide the expansion pie.

Too often, he was asked to save the owners from themselves.

Vincent was not a perfect commissioner. He was too strident in the Rose case; Rose’s name belongs on the Hall of Fame ballot, this being a country that still believes in free elections. He was a bully in the Howe case, airing out Yankee officials for exercising their right to free speech, for which he later apologized. And he was flat-out wrong in his initial opposition to the sale of the Seattle Mariners to a Japanese-held corporation.

But, more often than not, he served baseball with aplomb and integrity, and when he erred in judgment, he erred on the side of baseball--a game he sincerely cares for and about, a game he sought to protect from what he perceived as an erosion of standards.

Vincent’s two shining moments came early. No one could have maneuvered the 1989 World Series around the tragedies of the Bay Area earthquake with more sensitivity and grace than Vincent. “We know our place,” he said as he postponed Game 3 until a proper amount of time had passed. And his intervention in the 1990 labor dispute spared the sport a crippling work stoppage--the owners were prepared to call off the season--and restored the games for the benefit of those who ought to matter the most, the fans.

Yet it was Vincent’s role in those negotiations that paved the way, two years down the road, to the off-ramp. Call it the ultimate suicide squeeze. Vincent sacrificed, and what he sacrificed was his job.

Viewing him as too conciliatory toward the players in 1990, the owners feared more of the same the next time around, which could be as soon as this winter. The accord of ’90 was to extend through the end of the ’94 season, with one catch--both sides had the option of reopening talks after the ’92 season.

Consider them officially reopened. Vincent was the last remaining obstacle and if you thought the padlocks on the gates were scary the last time, you haven’t seen anything yet. The owners have issued a death warrant on arbitration, will want to ram a salary cap down the players’ throats, and the 1993 season be damned if they don’t get what they want.

No wonder players were hanging their heads Monday after Vincent’s resignation, calling it a dark day for baseball.

Fay Vincent was in the best interest of baseball. And now? The owners already are composing the classified ad.

WANTED: Lackey. Good pay, little self-respect. See lots of free baseball, provided you travel in our back pocket. Be your own man on your own time. On ours, you belong to us.

Lee MacPhail, the retired American League president, is reportedly high on the owners’ list of potential successors to Vincent. When asked what he would do if asked by the owners to serve, MacPhail said all one needs to know about the job:

“God forbid.”