When the Loma Prieta earthquake shook San Francisco just before the third game of the 1989 World Series, it halted the sport for 10 days. Fay Vincent, in his first full month as baseball commissioner, could not have predicted the disaster. But he always knew the fault lines.
Vincent, who died on Sunday at 86, was acutely aware of the danger just below the surface of the game. Baseball’s pastoral veneer was shattered once before, by a gambling scandal that created the need for a commissioner in 1920. He went to his grave fearing it could happen again.
Consider this his final warning to the sport he adored.
