Fay Vincent

Fay Vincent, a lawyer 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 February 1 2025 in Vero Beach, Fla. He was 86. 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. 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 issued a no-confidence vote in Mr. Vincent, and on Sept. 7, 1992, he resigned. To replace him the owners appointed Bud Selig, owner of the Milwaukee Brewers., Vincent attended Yale Law School after getting his undergraduate degree at Williams College, worked for five years as an associate in the New York law firm of Whitman and Ransom before moving to Washington and becoming a partner at Caplin and Drysdale. In 1978, he joined the Securities and Exchange Commission as associate director of its corporate finance division. He joined Columbia Pictures in 1978 and was made vice-chairman of Coca-Cola when it acquired the company in 1982, His first marriage, to Valerie McMahon, ended in divorce. She died in 2007. He married Christina Clarke Watkins in 1998. She survives him, as do his children from his first marriage, Anne Vincent and William and Edward Vincent, who are twins; three stepchildren, Jake, Ned and Nilla Watkins; his sisters, Dr. Joanna Vincent and Barbara Vincent; and several grandchildren. He had a home in New Canaan, Conn., as well as one in Vero Beach.