A. Bartlett Giamatti

Very few people have the ability, adaptability, and ambition to rise to the highest leadership level of two distinctly different professions. A. Bartlett Giamatti was one of them. As a child Giamatti was passionate about literature and baseball. As an adult he became a noted scholar and teacher of English and Italian Renaissance literature at Yale University before becoming its president for eight years.

But ultimately it was baseball that held sway in his heart, so much so that in 1986 he left one of the most prestigious positions in academia to become president of the National League and, in 1989, the seventh commissioner of Major League Baseball. Sadly, his tenure as commissioner was brief—five months to the day—as he died of a heart attack at the age of 51. However, he left behind an impressive legacy marked by his tireless work ethic, his eloquent command of language, and his relentless passion for both the academic world and baseball.

And it is at baseball’s shrine that Giamatti is memorialized. Baseball researchers flock to the A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Center at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, and are greeted by a portrait of Giamatti.

Angelo Bartlett “Bart” Giamatti was born on April 4, 1938, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Valentine and Mary (Walton) Giamatti. His paternal grandparents had immigrated at the turn of the 20th century to New Haven, Connecticut, from Telese, a town 35 miles northeast of Naples, Italy. His grandfather, Angelo Giammattei (as the family name was originally spelled), worked as a laborer at the New Haven Clock Company, but Angelo’s son, Valentine, received a scholarship to attend Yale, where he earned a bachelor’s degree before attaining a PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard University.

Valentine married Mary Claybaugh Walton, a descendant of New England sea captains and, in the case of her father, Bartlett Walton, a shoe manufacturer. As if to formalize this union of diverse ethnic backgrounds, Bart was named for both grandfathers.1

In 1940, the family moved to South Hadley, Massachusetts, when Valentine was hired as a professor of Italian at Mount Holyoke College, where he remained until his retirement in 1973. Their daughter, Elena, whom Bart called Elria, was born that June. A second son, Dino, would follow in 1943. Bart’s mother Mary, known as Peggy, shared Valentine’s love of Italian culture. A graduate of Smith College in nearby Northampton, she studied music, art, and Italian, and spent her junior year in Italy.

Even though Bart was raised in this sophisticated intellectual environment, as a youngster he was anything but an aloof nerd. Rather, as biographer Robert Moncreiff observed, he was “a high-spirited and mischievous boy, the ringleader among his best friends,” and “the entertainer, the actor, on stage.”2

A classic New England Yankee town complete with a village green, South Hadley, with a population of less than 7,000 at that time, is situated 90 miles west of Boston along the eastern bank of the Connecticut River. There was not much in the way of entertainment in South Hadley, but like most young boys of that era, Bart found pleasure in playing baseball. And, like the majority of New Englanders, he was a diehard Red Sox fan.

But unlike most Boston fans, he did not idolize Ted Williams. Relatively small in stature and lacking a strong arm, he chose to play second base, emulating his idol, Boston’s future Hall of Fame second baseman Bobby Doerr.

Recalling those days many years later, Giamatti said: “The Red Sox in South Hadley, the Red Sox in small New England towns, that was the big league in every sense of the word. That was the universe, that was the firmament, what the Lord had put out there to give some stability, coherence, and purpose in life.”3

As much as he loved the game, his limited skill on the diamond prevented him from playing for the South Hadley High School team. Instead, coach Tom Landers, impressed by his smarts and organizational skills, appointed Bart to be the manager of the team, a foreshadowing of his later success as an administrator.

The son of an immigrant mother who never learned to speak English, Valentine was anxious to instill in Bart the ability to express himself well, both verbally and in writing. He also fostered in his son an appreciation for literature and, as a Dante scholar, encouraged him to read the entirety of The Divine Comedy.

Thanks to his father’s sabbatical leaves, Bart spent two years in Italy, first when he was nine and again during his junior year in high school, enabling him to become fluent in Italian. Upon returning to the US in 1956 following his second year in Italy, Bart concluded his secondary education at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, a school known for preparing students for the Ivy League. Unlike most of his classmates, he was new to the school, but he made his mark quickly. “Conversation was his sport,” wrote James Reston Jr., author of the dual Pete Rose/Giamatti biography Collision at Home Plate. “He gravitated naturally to activities in which his skill at communication could be handsomely displayed.”4

When Giamatti entered Yale in 1956, his intellect, wit, and charisma served him well as he excelled both in and out of the classroom. He joined the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, presumably because so many of its members were athletes. Prior to his senior year he was selected as a member of two of the most prestigious campus groups. Topping off his impressive undergraduate experience was his selection as the class orator, a distinction similar to that of valedictorian except that it rewarded both top grades and popularity.

On June 18, 1960, soon after his graduation, Giamatti married Toni Marilyn Smith, a native of Orange, New Jersey. They met while Toni was a student in the Yale School of Drama before she went on to receive a B.S. degree from Columbia University. They had three children: Marcus in 1961, Elena in 1964, and the noted character actor Paul in 1967.

In 1960, after graduating magna cum laude, Giamatti enrolled in Yale’s doctoral program in English. The subject of his dissertation was Italian and English epic poetry of the Renaissance, poems in which the hero endures great challenges in search of truth or tranquility. His primary focus was on the image of the garden as an apparent place of serenity and order—a reminder of the earthly paradise–but it proves to be an unattainable ideal in a world filled with constant change. It was a metaphor that would permeate much of his later writing, both in terms of academia and baseball.5

After receiving his PhD, Giamatti taught Italian and comparative literature at Princeton University for two years before being hired by Yale in 1966 as an assistant professor. Once back in the familiar surroundings of his alma mater, he quickly established himself as a favorite teacher. He held his students to high standards, but his engaging personality and dramatic flair enabled him to make whatever subject he was teaching interesting and relevant. According to one student, “There was always passion in his teaching, always humor. He loved teaching, his students, and our ideas, and we loved him back.”6

The combination of his success in teaching and scholarship led to rapid promotion. In 1968 he was promoted to associate professor; two years later he became full professor at the early age of 33. In 1975 he was named Director of the Humanities. In 1977 he became the first holder of the John Hay Whitney Professorship in the Humanities.

In May 1977, Kingman Brewster announced that he was resigning as president of Yale. That December, Giamatti was chosen to be the 19th person to hold that position. In making that choice, the third-oldest American university took a big step away from its Puritan heritage. Yale was founded in 1701 by Congregationalist clergymen, and its first 12 leaders were ordained ministers. Giamatti was the first president who was not an Anglo-Saxon Protestant, and the first “ethnic” to head the school. At the age of 40 when he took office, he became the youngest president in the history of Yale other than two leaders in the 18th century.

When he took the role of president on July 1, 1978, he faced significant challenges. According to the New York Times, “He inherited an institution that, by all accounts, was in a malaise. Among the problems were budget deficits, a foundering capital-fund drive, crumbling buildings, an uncertain academic mission and a disgruntled body of alumni.”7

During Giamatti’s time as president, the Times article continued, “the size of the endowment rose to $1.35 billion from $544 million and alumni contributions rose to $26.4 million from $9.6 million. When he left office in 1986, it was generally agreed that Yale’s finances were in order, the physical plant was well on its way to being restored and, despite inconsistent performances by the football team, Yale’s 100,000 alumni were once again enthusiastic.”8

The challenge that ultimately took the greatest toll on Giamatti in his presidential tenure grew out of a longstanding conflict between Yale and its blue-collar workers. Between 1968 and 1977, there had been four strikes, each longer than the previous one. When Giamatti took office, the union included about 1,000 people who were mainly janitors and food-service workers.

The union sought to increase its base by organizing Yale’s roughly 3,000 clerks and technicians, mainly women, who were told the union would fight for their right to equal pay. In May 1983 clerks and technicians chose to unionize, raising the number of union members to about 4,000. Negotiations continued for more than a year, but when Yale made its final offer, the union refused and called a strike in September 1984.

When the strike began, Giamatti, who had for the most part stayed out of the spotlight, became the spokesman of the administration, carrying out the policy established by the Yale Corporation, the school’s governing body. By doing so he “immediately made himself the target and the villain to the union sympathizers. ‘Bart Buster’ T-shirts began to pop up all over New Haven, and pickets sang songs that were directed at Giamatti personally.”9 As Giamatti remained inflexible in negotiations, the strike went on week after week. Such was its impact that by late December the situation was unbearable and Yale gave in to the union’s demands unconditionally.

The experience had strong consequences for Giamatti, both emotionally and physically. It was later discovered that he had suffered a minor heart attack at the time. But Giamatti’s health had shown signs of decline well before the strike; he suffered from chronic kidney disorder and circulatory issues. Despite his health issues, Giamatti was not diligent about taking care of himself. He worked late into the night and indulged in a diet not recommended for someone with a family history of heart disease. He was also a chain smoker for much of his life.

On April 22, 1985, Giamatti announced that he would retire as president of Yale effective in June 1986. The obvious question was what he would do at that point. Would he return to his former role as teacher? Would he produce new scholarly works? Would he be offered posts at other schools?

Instead, his selection as the 12th president in the 110-year history of the NL was announced on June 10, 1986. (A few days before, NBC Sports broadcaster Marv Albert jokingly suggested to Whitey Herzog, then managing the St. Louis Cardinals, that there might be an opening for him at Yale. Herzog was distinctly unamused.10)

Giamatti took office on December 11. Unable to play the game he loved, he now had the chance to govern it. His name would appear on every National League baseball rather than on the cover of a scholarly book. It was as if a childhood dream had come true, save for his preference of leagues.

When asked at a press conference what Dante, the author of The Divine Comedy, would have thought about his move, he said: “He would have been delighted. He knew very well the nature of paradise, and what preceded it. After all, baseball was first played in the Elysian Fields, in Hoboken, N.J., in 1845.”11

So why were major league owners interested in the president of one of America’s most prestigious universities as a possible baseball executive? Some may have recalled Giamatti’s famous statement when he was a candidate for the Yale presidency that the only thing he ever wanted to be president of was the American League. His firm stand against the Yale union may have played a role. Then too, as the author of essays such as “Tom Seaver’s Farewell” (which received the 1977 P. Dutton Best Magazine Sports Story of the Year award) and “The Green Fields of the Mind,” Giamatti had proven to be a passionate and knowledgeable promoter of the game he considered to be a cherished American institution.

When questioned about his decision to abandon academia for baseball, his explanation was fitting for someone with a romantic view of the game: “I’m almost fifty years old and I’ve just fallen in love and run away with a beautiful redhead with flashing eyes whose name is baseball.”12

Two years into Giamatti’s presidency, Roger Angell wrote, “As expected, he has fitted smoothly and happily into his new command, and has acquired friends and devotees among the serried keepers of the game, including owners, general managers, front-office people, field managers, umpires, and (some, at least) writers.”13

Regarding Giamatti’s relationship with umpires, his deputy and successor as commissioner, Francis T. “Fay” Vincent, wrote, “Bart was beloved by the umpires. He understood the high purpose of their work: to maintain the integrity of the game. Bart elevated the status of umpires immeasurably by taking their role so seriously.”14

However, some questioned the logic of placing the leadership of the NL in the hands of someone with no previous connection to professional baseball. Citing Giamatti’s controversial rulings on such topics as scuffing baseballs, arguments with umpires, a new balk rule, and an adjustment to the strike zone, journalist Charles Siebert wrote in September 1988 that Giamatti’s time as league president, then a little over two years, had “not been entirely dreamlike.”15

Particularly problematic to some was Giamatti’s surprisingly lengthy 30-day suspension, together with a $10,000 fine, of Pete Rose—then Cincinnati Reds manager—for twice shoving umpire Dave Pallone during an argument in April 1988. That and other disciplinary actions against players and managers led some to call him the law-and-order president. But he was simply being true to his convictions.

In the same way that he had felt obliged to maintain the traditional values of Yale and its curriculum, he also felt obliged to maintain the integrity of baseball. At his press conference the day after he was selected as NL president, he said: ”I favor the fundamental grid, the geometrical beauty, the fundamental structure of the history of baseball, and I think it ought to be tampered with very gingerly,”16

Consequently, as president of the NL he was deeply devoted to the rules and traditions of the game–to the extent of being suspicious of, or downright hostile to, changes that, in his view, threatened to diminish the game that he cherished. He was opposed to the designated hitter rule, artificial turf, and flashy scoreboards with their continuous entertainment that distracted the fans’ attention from the game on the field. He also feared that the rapid expansion of televised baseball threatened to create an imbalance of revenue among franchises.

While Giamatti took an active role in enforcing the on-field rules of baseball, he was no less concerned with the experience of fans in the ballpark. He was particularly disturbed by the deteriorating environment in the stands, where there was increasing vulgarity and violence fueled by excessive drinking. Anxious to restore order and decorum, he expressed his expectations in a 1987 essay in the Boston Globe in which he urged stadium managers to establish rules for the sale of alcohol and to take other steps to make the fan experience safer and more enjoyable. “If the ambience for the sporting event is not considered crucial by management,” he concluded, “there is no reason to believe that fans will leave home and come out.”17

According to James Reston Jr., in his role as NL president, “Giamatti’s personality was dazzling the world of baseball. As a celebrant of the game, there had never been anyone like him. . . . An insider now who could speak eloquently to the wider world about the institution of baseball, about its history, and its value to American life, he elevated the game.18

On June 8, 1988, Peter Ueberroth announced that he would resign as commissioner as of March 31, 1989. On September 8, 1988, the 26 club owners unanimously elected Giamatti to a five-year term as seventh commissioner of the major leagues. He took office on April 1, 1989, the day after Ueberroth stepped down.

Knowing that some owners had raised questions about his business acumen, Giamatti created the position of deputy commissioner and appointed his friend Fay Vincent. A graduate of Yale Law School, Vincent was a successful businessman who had previously served as executive vice president of Coca-Cola and CEO of Columbia Pictures.

In his final book, Take Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games, Giamatti explored the philosophical and cultural significance of sports, particularly baseball. Adapting the image of the “garden” that was the focus of his PhD dissertation, he depicted baseball as an attempt to return to a lost paradise, a place always envisioned as an enclosed, green space, much like the green field of a baseball park.

He asserted that in a world of disillusionment, we continue to long for a place of innocence and freedom. Growing up as a Red Sox fan, suffering the franchise’s ever-longer championship drought, he was well-versed in the reality that life does not always live up to our expectations. Yet, he believed that baseball could foster some vestige of the ancient desire for a lost paradise.

Giamatti’s 1977 essay, “The Green Fields of the Mind,” begins with what may be his most famous lines: “It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.”19

Here Giamatti merged his love of the game with the stark reality that disillusion is a part of life. Baseball, for Giamatti, was a source of at least temporary relief from inevitable disillusionment; he called the game “our best invention to stay change.”20 The game provided a temporary taste of the lost paradise, the mythical green garden of peace and tranquility.

But change is inevitable. The game “breaks my heart . . . because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding . . . . that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion.” But unlike those who can live without illusion, “I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.”21

For Giamatti, the ultimate fan who saw in the game he loved a clear expression of the national psyche, baseball became a metaphorical expression of the American Dream, not as material fulfillment but as a spiritual quest for home. The basic rhythm of baseball, the going out and the subsequent quest to return home, is “part of the plot of the story of our national life.” That plot is the story of “going home after having left home, the story of how difficult it is to find the origins one so deeply needs to find.” Moreover, “the concept of home has a particular resonance for a nation of immigrants, all of whom left one home to seek another.”22

In February 1989, just weeks before Giamatti took office as commissioner, allegations arose that Pete Rose had been betting on baseball games as Reds manager. On February 20, Rose and his attorneys met with Commissioner Ueberroth, Giamatti, and Fay Vincent at the major leagues’ offices. While admitting that he bet on other sports, Rose denied that he ever bet on baseball.23 Thus began what would become the most challenging part of Giamatti’s brief tenure as commissioner.

Following the 1919 Black Sox scandal, Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis established Rule 21, which grants the commissioner authority to permanently ban any player, umpire, or club/league official who bets on a game in which they have a duty to perform.24 Living by the rules was a significant element of Bart Giamatti’s beliefs and behavior. The question now: To what lengths would he go to uphold the rules in the case of one of baseball’s most legendary players and the all-time leader in hits?

Three days after the meeting in New York, Giamatti recruited Washington attorney John Dowd to conduct a thorough and fair investigation into the Rose issue. One of his first witnesses was Ron Peters, Rose’s primary bookmaker, who was about to be sentenced for drug dealing and tax evasion. He told Dowd that he had taken bets from Rose in amounts over $1 million in total on football, basketball, and baseball games, including bets on the Cincinnati Reds.25

In return for Peters’ cooperation, Dowd assured him that the commissioner would write a commendatory letter to the sentencing judge indicating that Peters’ testimony was truthful, even though there was no corroborating evidence to confirm that. Giamatti sent the letter, drafted by Dowd, to United States District Judge Carl Rubin of Cincinnati. In response, Rubin berated Giamatti for what he believed to be the Commissioner’s premature conclusion that Rose was guilty, and sent a copy of the letter to Reuven Katz, Rose’s primary attorney.

On May 9, 1989, the Dowd Report, a 225-page document providing significant testimony regarding Rose’s gambling habits, was presented to Giamatti, who scheduled a hearing for May 25 in which Rose would have the chance to respond to the accusations. But since Giamatti’s letter to Judge Rubin suggested a basis for questioning the commissioner’s impartiality, Rose chose to pursue legal injunctions that would drag out the issue for months.

What began in February as an inquiry as to whether Pete Rose was guilty of breaking baseball’s cardinal rule had become by mid-August a four-month standoff of delays and postponements between two major figures in the baseball world.

Vincent wrote, “I had never seen Bart in so ugly a mood. In that whole period, he was chain-smoking, barely sleeping, eating constantly, getting no exercise, getting pounded in the papers every morning and by the legal system the rest of the day.”26

Exasperated by the legal delays and knowing that the longer the dispute dragged on, the more the image of the commissioner’s office and baseball was being damaged, Giamatti was anxious to bring the embarrassing confrontation to an end. Meanwhile, realizing that their legal efforts were in vain, Rose and his team agreed to negotiate.

On August 24, 1989, at a press conference in New York, Giamatti revealed the five-page settlement that he and Rose had signed the previous day. The agreement stated that “Peter Edward Rose is hereby declared permanently ineligible in accordance with Major League Rule 21 and placed on the Ineligible List.”27

“The banishment for life of Pete Rose from baseball is the sad end of a sorry episode,” Giamatti said in his statement to the press. “One of the game’s greatest players has engaged in a variety of acts which have stained the game, and he must now live with the consequences of those acts.”

Giamatti then summarized the motivation of his actions. “I believe baseball is a beautiful and exciting game, loved by millions—I among them—and I believe baseball is an important enduring American institution. It must assert and aspire to the highest principles—of integrity, of professionalism, of performance, of fair play within its rules.”28

The key element of the agreement for Rose was that he was not pronounced guilty of betting on baseball: “Nothing in this agreement shall be deemed either an admission or a denial by Peter Edward Rose of the allegation that he bet on any Major League Baseball game.” Rose would also have the right to apply for reinstatement after one year.29

Nevertheless, in answer to a question posed at the press conference, Giamatti said, “In the absence of a hearing and therefore in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I am confronted by the factual record of the Dowd report, and on the basis of that, yes, I have concluded that he bet on baseball.”30 

“The matter of Mr. Rose is now closed,” said Giamatti at the conclusion of his remarks. “Let no one think that it did not hurt baseball. That hurt will pass, however, as the great glory of the game asserts itself and a resilient institution goes forward. Let it also be clear that no individual is superior to the game.”31

On September 1, 1989, nine days after that press conference, Bart Giamatti died suddenly of a heart attack at his summer home in Edgartown, Massachusetts, on Martha’s Vineyard, at the age of 51. News of his death appeared on page one of the New York Times, which reported that Giamatti’s passing “prompted expressions of sorrow around the nation from leading figures in education, government and sports, as well as from colleagues and former associates and students.”32 At a private, graveside service, he was buried on September 6 in the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, the resting place of 14 Yale presidents.

Giamatti’s life was celebrated by both academia and baseball. A memorial service attended by more than 2,000 people was held on the Yale campus on October 6. In addition, a sculpted black granite bench was dedicated in his honor, only the fourth memorial on campus dedicated to a Yale figure. Inscribed on the bench was this Giamatti quotation: “A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching.”33

On November 15, “A Celebration of Bart Giamatti and Baseball” took place at Carnegie Hall. The event drew several hundred people, including academics, statesmen, baseball officials, owners, legends such as Joe DiMaggio and Willie Mays, and Giamatti’s boyhood hero Bobby Doerr. Among the speakers was Roger Angell, who called Giamatti “a writer of genius.”34

Although he had little chance, beyond his ruling on the Rose case, to demonstrate what his concrete contributions might have been as commissioner, his love of the game—demonstrated both in his defense of its traditions and his eloquent celebrations of its meaning—were enough to convince many of his unique status in the game.

New York Times columnist Ira Berkow speculated that Giamatti, “this most cultured and civilized and warm and generous and witty man . . . might have become the best baseball commissioner we’ve ever had. He had brains, sinew, and the best wishes of the game.”35

In Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball, George Will wrote that Giamatti “was to the Commissioner’s office what Sandy Koufax was to the pitcher’s mound: Giamatti’s career had the highest ratio of excellence to longevity.36

Bud Selig, then owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, was a member of the two-man committee—along with Fred Wilpon, principal owner of the New York Mets—that recommended Giamatti for the post of commissioner. “I was stunned at how much he knew about the game,” Selig said. “I remember saying to myself, how could we find anybody else so smart, so articulate. He was one of the most remarkable human beings I’ve ever met.”37

Twenty-five years after Giamatti passed away, his son Marcus wrote a remembrance of his father for ESPN. “My father,” he wrote, “had genuine convictions. He stood by them with courage and without apology. He understood his responsibility to respect and uphold the principles and laws of whatever institution he had been tapped to steward, and he did so with integrity.38

The early lessons Giamatti learned from his own father about the importance and power of language became a prominent element of his future success. His professional life was largely defined by his passion for both literature and baseball. “I’ve been a lover of baseball,” he said. “I always found it the most satisfying and nourishing of games outside literature.”39 His extraordinary success in both fields was enhanced by his ability to express his passion eloquently, both in the written and spoken word. (Roger Angell called him a “.400 lifetime talker.”40)

His in-depth analysis of baseball’s social significance was a combination of romantic sensibility and scholarly acumen which he expressed in lyrical prose. His eloquence, together with his intellect, charm, and wit, enabled him, notwithstanding his relatively brief life, to create a remarkable legacy as a distinguished teacher and scholar, the leader of one of America’s most prominent universities, and the commissioner of Major League Baseball.

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Rory Costello and Kurt Blumenau and checked for accuracy by members of SABR’s fact-checking team.

Photo credit: A. Bartlett Giamatti, SABR-Rucker Archive.

Sources

In addition to the sources shown in the Notes, the following source is useful in learning more of the relationship between Giamatti and Pete Rose:

O’Brien, Keith. Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball (New York, Pantheon Books, 2024), 249-331.

Notes

1 It was Valentine’s idea that his son be nicknamed Bart “because he knew Angelo would inevitably be shortened to Angel in the schoolyard.” James Reston Jr., Collision at Home Plate: The Lives of Pete Rose and Bart Giamatti, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press (1997), 16.

2 Robert P. Moncreiff, Bart Giamatti: A Profile, New Haven: Yale University Press (2007), 8.

3 Reston, Collision at Home Plate, 18.

4 Reston, Collision at Home Plate, 23.

5 The dissertation was published by Princeton University Press in 1966 as The Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance Epic.

6 Moncreiff, Bart Giamatti, 64.

7 Robert D. McFadden, “Giamatti, Scholar and Baseball Chief, Dies at 51,” New York Times, September 2, 1989, 1.

8 McFadden, “Giamatti, Scholar and Baseball Chief, Dies at 51.”

9 Reston, Collision at Home Plate, 176.

10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C_h00u2LW8 (accessed July 26, 2026).

11 Ira Berkow, “Sports of the Times: From Dante to Darling,” New York Times, June 11, 1986, D27.

12 Roger Angell, “Celebration,” in Once More Around the Park: A Baseball Reader, New York: Ballantine Books, (1991), 319. Whitey Herzog respected Giamatti, Marv Albert’s jibe aside.

13 Angell, “Celebration,” in Once More Around the Park, 306.

14 Fay Vincent, The Last Commissioner: A Baseball Valentine, New York: Simon & Schuster (2002), 61.

15 Charles Siebert, “Baseball’s Renaissance Man,” New York Times Magazine, September 4, 1988, 36.

16 Berkow, “Sports of the Times: From Dante to Darling.”

17 A. Bartlett Giamatti, “To Sports and Fans: Clean Up Your Act,” Boston Globe, July 20, 1987, 17.

18 Reston, Collision at Home Plate, 249.

19 Kenneth S. Robson, A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books, 1998), 7.

20 Robson, A Great and Glorious Game, 12.

21 Robson, A Great and Glorious Game, 12-13.

22 A. Bartlett Giamatti, Take Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games (New York: Bloomsbury, 1989), 81, 90, 92.

23 Reston, Collision at Home Plate, 262; Vincent, The Last Commissioner, 106.

24 Major League Rule 21, https://content.mlb.com/documents/8/2/2/296982822/Major_League_Rule_21.pdf , accessed on Major League Baseball’s website on April 12, 2026.

25 Reston, Collision at Home Plate, 283.

26 Vincent, The Last Commissioner, 112–13.

27 Dowd Report Agreement, https://www.thedowdreport.com/agreement.pdf, accessed March 26, 2026.

28 Statement read by A. Bartlett Giamatti on August 24, 1989, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/p_roseb.shtml  accessed via Baseball-Almanac.com on March 26, 2026.

29 Dowd Report Agreement. For 15 years following his banishment, Rose continued to deny that he bet on baseball. He finally confessed that he had in his book, My Prison Without Bars, published in 2004 at the same time as that year’s Hall of Fame class was announced.

30 Murray Chass, “Rose is Out, but He Says Wait Till Next Year,” New York Times, August 25, 1989, 1.

31 Statement read by A. Bartlett Giamatti on August 24, 1989.

32 McFadden, “Giamatti, Scholar and Baseball Chief, Dies at 51.”

33 Reston, Collision at Home Plate, 314.

34 Robert Mcg. Thomas Jr., “2 Worlds Meet at a Memorial for Giamatti,” New York Times, November 16, 1989, B16.

35 Ira Berkow, “Sports of the Times: The Green Fields of Bart’s Mind,” New York Times, September 2, 1989: 41.

36 George Will, Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball New York: Macmillan 1990), 4-5.

37 Bud Selig, in-person interview with author, July 3, 1997.

38 Marcus Giamatti, “Remembering Bart Giamatti,” https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/11435773/mlb-remembering-bart-giamatti  accessed April 16, 2026.

39 Murray Chass, “A ‘Man of Letters’ for the N.L.,” The Sporting News, June 23, 1986: 16.

40 Roger Angell, “Celebration,” in Once More Around the Park, 306.