The Last Commissioner: A Baseball Valentine

From Publishers Weekly To publish a valentine to baseball on the heels of the sport's recent labor crisis seems like a particularly bad stroke of timing. It is to his credit that Vincent, the commissioner of baseball in the late 1980s and early '90s, ignores the game's current scars to focus on its past-both the distant past of DiMaggio and Williams and the more recent past of Vincent's own tenure. Unfortunately, Vincent too often sends his valentine to his brand-name chums, to whom he gives various shout-outs ("Ralph Branca... is today a great friend"; late baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti was "a friend who enriched me, changed me, challenged me, fascinated me"), or even to himself. He describes his "full life" cavorting with CEOs-he was a Hollywood producer, a Coca-Cola executive and a Yale Law School graduate, he reminds readers a few times-and assorted baseball legends. What redeems the book are the deep reserves of baseball anecdotes throughout, recalled by everyone from Leo Durocher and the DiMaggio brothers to a rookie umpire. Vincent also vividly retells the turbulent months he spent building cases against Pete Rose and George Steinbrenner in a manner that manages to be informed without feeling like insider gossip. A chapter on baseball's most recent labor crisis offers some innovative, if at times not fully cooked, ideas about how owners and players can better work together. This is an uneven and at times self-indulgent effort, but Vincent gets away with it, in part because of the book's appealing leisurely pace and nostalgic tone.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Upon the untimely death of A. Bartlett Giamatti in 1989, Vincent, Giamatti's friend and deputy, became commissioner of baseball. In 1992, after a "no confidence" vote by the Major League club owners, he resigned. Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig served as acting commissioner until his daughter Wendy assumed the role of Brewers CEO and president, ostensibly eliminating the obvious conflict of interest of an owner being commissioner, and in 1998 Selig was elected commissioner. To many, Vincent, who, like his seven predecessors had no such conflict of interest, remains "the last commissioner." Here he recounts his strife with Pete Rose, George Steinbrenner, and the owners who made up the "Slay Fay" movement prior to his resignation, settling a few scores in an admirably low-key way. Vincent is strongest, however, in the "baseball valentine" portions, speaking of how the game has enriched his life and offering vignettes of baseball people from his father to Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Satchel Paige, and Derek Jeter. If the infighting and business turmoil that led to his resignation explain why baseball is on shaky ground, its fans' innate love of the game as reflected by the former commissioner shows why baseball should prevail. Recommended for most public library baseball collections.