THE NEW YORK TIMES – Fay Vincent, who presided over Major League Baseball as its eighth commissioner during a time when it was shaken by labor strife, the first shadows of steroid use and, quite literally, a powerful earthquake that interrupted the 1989 World Series, died on Saturday in Vero Beach, Fla. He was 86.
His death, in a hospital, was caused by complications of bladder cancer, his wife, Christina, said. Mr. Vincent lived in Vero Beach.
Before reaching baseball’s highest office, Mr. Vincent overcame a debilitating injury as a college student to become a law partner, an official in the Securities Exchange Commission, chairman of Columbia Pictures and vice-chairman of Coca-Cola.
But he was most visible to the public in his time as baseball commissioner, from Sept. 13, 1989, to Sept. 7, 1992, rising to that post in a period of grief. He had been deputy commissioner under his good friend A. Bartlett Giamatti when Mr. Giamatti died of a heart attack suddenly at 51.
The owners of the major league teams then handed Mr. Vincent the reins.
“Vincent used his legal training in helping to negotiate an agreement with [Pete] Rose to leave the game, and on Aug. 24, 1989 … Rose would be banned from baseball for life.”
A little more than a month later, he was present when, shortly after 5 p.m. on Oct. 19, 1989, the Bay Area experienced a severe earthquake — 7.1 on the Richter scale — that caused San Francisco’s Candlestick Park to rumble, as if ready to fall apart.
There, the San Francisco Giants were preparing to face their Bay Area American League counterpart, the Oakland A’s, in Game 3 of the World Series when the earth shook, forcing cancellation of the game and a postponement of the Series
Sixty-seven people died in the region, and destruction was widespread. Candlestick Park itself, home of the Giants, was damaged when pieces of concrete fell from the baffle at the top of the stadium, and its power was knocked out.
There were calls for the Series to be canceled …
