Word: barts
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...when Bart explains the logic behind his errant pilgrimage, it all apparently makes sense. "Leaving the faculty at Yale in 1978 to become an administrator was the major transition," he says. "Every teacher who has ever been induced to defect to the other side invariably says" -- he pounds the desk in mock emphasis -- " 'I'm. Going. To. Go. On. Teaching. By. Gosh.' It is psychologically necessary for them to say that. I said it. But it's never realistic. What I hope I became at Yale was a facilitator of those who are very, very good at what they...
Giamatti obviously means every word of this, but he is hardly the passive, pliable, accommodating technocrat that his self-description portrays. In truth, he has never abandoned teaching; he has moved his impressive pedagogical skills from the classroom into progressively larger arenas. Bart holds certain truths to be self-evident. Chief among these is his unfashionable conviction that individualism must cease when it threatens the legitimate, shared concerns of community. This belief is not a late-blooming flower of incipient dotage. As a fledgling professor during the 1960s, Giamatti bore the plumage of the counterculture. His clothes were rumpled...
...holds and acts upon deep moral convictions. This news, set within the recent annals of executive Americana, is so startling as to be preposterous. Even some of the 26 team owners who on Sept. 8 unanimously elected Giamatti commissioner may not fully understand what they have wrought. Superficially, Bart resembles the six previous commissioners, dating back to the original, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, that craggy plinth of probity who was recruited by the owners in 1920 to restore baseball's integrity after the "Black Sox" scandal during the previous fall's World Series. Like them all, Giamatti believes in healthy...
...knobby, swampy world that roils below the level of such Olympian meditations, Giamatti is going to face some real problems, and pretty soon. For one thing, two arbitrators have now ruled that the club owners -- Bart's bosses -- conspired to restrict the movement of players who had become free agents after the 1985 and 1986 seasons. In lay terms, eligible players were allowed to offer their services to the highest bidder, except that few bids were forthcoming save from the clubs for which they were already playing. These judgments could figure explosively when the contract between the clubs...
Giamatti's role in this unfolding, inevitable crisis will be under the closest imaginable scrutiny. Some mutters from the Players Association have already accused Bart of being the owners' apologist. Giamatti is in no mood to criticize the people who hired him. "I've gotten to know all the owners, and I think they are a remarkable set of human beings." He also resists charges of partisanship: "I'm not anti-players, anti-umpires, anti-anybody." He elaborates: "My responsibility will be to serve, as best I can, the totality of the institution...