Word: vincent
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...measure a baseball fan by his boyhood heroes. On the wall behind Fay Vincent's desk is the original artwork from Whitey Ford's 1953 Topps baseball card, a talisman of the bygone era when the New York Yankees symbolized success, stability and smug superiority. If Joe DiMaggio personified grace, and Mickey Mantle represented God-given talent, then Ford, the gritty little lefty ace of the pitching staff, was guile elevated to Hall of Fame standards. This quality is not lost on the baseball commissioner, who says with reverence, "He had the greatest pick-off move to first...
...image is worth savoring. A pick-off can be a thing of beauty: the pitcher leans in toward home plate, spies the base runner overreaching himself, then suddenly wheels and fires to first to nab him by half a step. Artful misdirection plus exact timing equals a dramatic out; Vincent understands that baseball equation. For never in the game's history has there been a pick-off move as adroit and emotionally satisfying as the one the commissioner executed last week when he threw George Steinbrenner out as the principal owner of the Yankees...
...star rightfielder to a 10-year contract in 1980. If this sounds confusing, take comfort that the commissioner saw in Steinbrenner "a pattern of behavior that borders on the bizarre." But the Yankee owner's payoff to a gambler, with its echoes of Pete Rose's bookie season, gave Vincent the disciplinary leverage he needed...
...feeling was that having him permanently removed from the management of the Yankees would be a very good result," Vincent explained afterward in his understated, lawyerly fashion. "And the only way to get it was to propose it. I couldn't make that part of the sanction because I can't order him to become a limited partner." Instead the commissioner devised his pick-off play, designed to snare Steinbrenner into voluntarily giving up his majority (55%) control of the Yankees...
...lawyer, Stephen E. Kaufman, arrived at the commissioner's office around 9 a.m. and were still there at 8 p.m. EDT, just moments before the decision was announced. Also in the room were Harold Tyler Jr., baseball's counsel in the case, and John Dowd, the lawyer who headed Vincent's investigation...