A. Bartlett Giamatti
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Baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti announcing Pete Rose's voluntary banishment from baseball amid accusations of betting on baseball games. Eight days later, Giamatti died of a heart attack. |
Angelo Bartlett "Bart" Giamatti (
April 4,
1938 â€"
September 1,
1989) was the President of
Yale University, and later, the 7th commissioner of
Major League Baseball in the
United States. Giamatti is perhaps best remembered for overseeing
the banishment of popular baseball player Pete Rose from the sport for his
gambling infractions (detailed in the
Dowd Report) in
1989.
He grew up near
Mount Holyoke College, in
South Hadley, Massachusetts, where his father, Valentine Giamatti, founded the departments of Italian and Spanish languages and literatures. He also collected translations of Dante's
Divine Comedy. His mother, Mary Claybaugh Walton, was the daughter of Helen (Davidson) Walton and Bartlett Walton, who attended Andover and
Harvard College. His paternal grandfather, Angelo Giammattei (so spelled) emigrated from Italy through
Ellis Island around 1900. Bart graduated from
South Hadley High School, and while president of Yale, served as a trustee of Mount Holyoke College.
A. Bartlett Giamatti attended
Andover and Yale. He was a member of
Delta Kappa Epsilon, as a Senior was tapped by the
Wolf's Head secret society, and graduated
magna cum laude in 1960. That same year, he married Toni Smith, who taught English for more than 20 years at the
Hopkins School in
New Haven, until her death in 2004.
Of their three children,
Marcus Giamatti,
Paul Giamatti, and Elena Giamatti, two have become actors. In the movie
Sideways, a photograph of the younger Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti) with his late father is really a picture of Paul and Bart Giamatti.
His friend,
Fay Vincent, wrote in
The Last Commissioner that Giamatti's official religion was
agnosticism.
Giamatti stayed in New Haven to receive his doctorate in 1964. He became a professor of English at Yale University, an author, and master of
Ezra Stiles College at Yale. He spent a brief period teaching at
Princeton, but was at Yale for most of his teaching life. Giamatti's scholarly work focused on
English Renaissance literature, particularly
Edmund Spenser, and relationships between English and
Italian Renaissance poets. His work on the genre of
pastoral and on the influence of
Ludovico Ariosto in England remains influential.
When Giamatti's tenure as Stiles master ended in 1972, he was so popular that his students wanted to honor him with a present. Giamatti told them he wanted a joke gift and they got him a moosehead (from a yard sale), which was ceremoniously hung in the dining hall. As the new master took over, Giamatti told him in a serious tone, "I have only one solemn duty to convey to you. Take care of my moose."
He served as President of Yale University from 1977 to 1986. He was the youngest President of the University in its history. He served on the Board of Trustees of Mount Holyoke College for many years, participating fully despite his Yale and baseball commitments.
His lifelong interest in baseball (Giamatti was a die-hard
Boston Red Sox fan) came into play when he became President of the
National League in
1986, and later Commissioner of Baseball in
1989. During his stint as National League president, Giamatti placed an emphasis on the need to improve the environment for the fan in the ballparks. Giamatti also decided to make umpires strictly enforce the
balk rule. He supported "social justice" as the only remedy for the lack of presence of minority managers, coaches, or executives at any level in Major League Baseball.
Just a year prior to his now monumental banishment of
Pete Rose, while still serving as National League president, Giamatti suspended Rose for 30 games after Rose shoved umpire
Dave Pallone on
April 30. Another notable suspension that Giamatti handed out in
1988 was to
Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher
Jay Howell, who was caught using
pine tar during the
National League Championship Series.
Giamatti, whose tough dealing with Yale's union favorably impressed Major League Baseball owners, was unanimously elected to succeed
Peter Ueberroth as commissioner on
September 8,
1988. As reflected in the agreement with Pete Rose, Giamatti was determined to maintain the integrity of the game during his brief commissionership.
While at his vacation home in
Martha's Vineyard, Giamatti, a heavy
smoker for many years, died suddenly of a massive
heart attack at the age of 51, just eight days after banishing Rose. Bart Giamatti had only been the commissioner of baseball for 154 days. Bart Giamatti became the second baseball commissioner to die while still in office (the first was
Kenesaw Mountain Landis). Giamatti was immediately succeeded by his close friend and baseball's first-ever deputy commissioner,
Fay Vincent.
James Reston, Jr. notes, in his book
Collision at Home Plate: The Lives of Pete Rose and Bart Giamatti, that Giamatti suffered from
Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, an inherited neuromuscular disease affecting peripheral nerves.
The Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance Epic (1966)
Play of Double Senses: Spenser's Faerie Queene (1975)
The University and the Public Interest (1981)
Exile and Change in Renaissance Literature (1984)
Take Time for Paradise: Americans and their Games (1989)
A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti (ed. Kenneth Robson, 1998)
* James Reston, Jr.,
Collision at Home Plate: The Lives of Pete Rose and Bart Giamatti (1991)
* Anthony Valerio,
A Life of A. Bartlett Giamatti: By Him and About Him (1991)
*
BaseballLibrary - profile and events
*
New York Times obituary*
Pete Rose / A. Bartlett Giamatti Agreement
