Bowie Kuhn at Yankee Stadium (1969).
Former commissioner dies at 80
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, March 16th 2007, 4:00 AM
TAMPA - Bowie Kuhn died yesterday, coincidentally one day after Pete Rose confessed to having bet on every baseball game he ever managed. Because when it came to baseball's first commandment, there was no fiercer defender of the game's integrity than Kuhn, who served as commissioner for 15 turbulent seasons, from 1969-84, the period of the game's greatest growth.
Kuhn, 80, died at St. Luke's Hospital in Jacksonville, Fla., following a short bout with pneumonia that led to respiratory failure. He had been hospitalized for several weeks.
He probably will be most remembered as the commissioner who presided over the advent of free agency, salary arbitration and the accompanying higher salaries - all of which were the product of the historic gains made by the Players Association and Kuhn's longtime nemesis, union chief Marvin Miller. But those labor victories by Miller were largely the product of stubborness, gross miscalculations and blind stupidity on the owners' part. For his part, the record will show no commissioner was tougher in dealing with the owners than Kuhn - he suspended George Steinbrenner, Charlie Finley and Ted Turner, mavericks all, for assorted offenses - and dealt swiftly and decisively with the drug crisis that threatened the game's integrity at the end of his term, meting out more suspensions in 1983 to Kansas City Royals players Willie Wilson, Willie Mays Aikens and Jerry Martin.
Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle afetr being reinstated by new commissioner, Peter Ueberroth (1985).
And when it came to gambling, Kuhn was vigilant almost to the extreme. He suspended Detroit Tigers star pitcher Denny McLain for three months in 1970 for consorting with gamblers and played a leading role in blocking Eddie DeBartolo's attempted 1980 purchase of the Chicago White Sox because of his ownership stake in race tracks. I always thought Kuhn's issuing of lifetime bans to Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle for taking jobs as greeters in Atlantic City casinos was a bit over the top, but, to the end, he maintained he was trying to send a message that even the most seemingly benign associations with gambling would not be tolerated on his watch.
The integrity of the game also was the issue when, in 1976, he voided Finley's attempted sales of his Oakland A's stars, Vida Blue to the Yankees for $1 million and Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers to the Red Sox for $1 million apiece. Finley retaliated by calling Kuhn "the village idiot" (which earned him another fine) and filing a lawsuit against baseball (which he lost). It was because of those sales that Kuhn instituted the $400,000 limit on money that could be included in transactions, which remained in effect until only a couple of years ago.
Commissioner Bowie Kuhn attends Game 5 of the 1979 World Series at Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium.
Although the perception is that Kuhn was the big loser in all of the major arbitrations and court cases that went against the owners, he, in fact, prevailed in the most high-profile one of all - Curt Flood's unsuccessful Supreme Court challenge to the reserve clause in 1970. As the National League attorney, it was Kuhn's victory in a lawsuit filed by the city of Milwaukee over the transfer of the Braves to Atlanta in 1965 that was the springboard to his being selected baseball's fifth commissioner, as a compromise candidate over Yankees president Mike Burke and NL president Chub Feeney. Kuhn also was successful in a lawsuit filed against him by Turner, who, as owner of the Braves in 1977, had been suspended for tampering with Giants outfielder Gary Matthews.
Kuhn's clashes with Steinbrenner likewise were legendary. Steinbrenner had not even owned the Yankees for a year when, in November 1974, Kuhn suspended him for two years after his federal conviction for illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon. Although he lifted the suspension after one year, Kuhn fined Steinbrenner nearly $400,000 over the next 10 years for numerous transgressions, including $5,000 in 1979 for tampering with Angels outfielder Brian Downing and, most notably, a total of $300,000 for The Boss' activities in the aftermath of the notorious 1983 Pine Tar Game. "I offer my condolences to the family," Steinbrenner said in a statement. "He was a good guy and I admired him. Even though we've had disagreements over the years, I never lost my respect for his integrity."
Though the owners reaped monumental profits during Kuhn's term in office - one of his final acts was a then-record $1.2 billon TV rights deal in 1983, the end result of his introduction of World Series night games - they ultimately turned on him and forced his ouster. For whatever consolation it was, the leader of dump-Bowie coup was Cardinals owner Gussie Busch, who had stubbornly refused Kuhn's advice to allow baseball's chief labor attorney John Gaherin to negotiate a settlement of the 1975 challenge to the reserve clause by pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally. The arbitrator of the case, Peter Seitz, had told Kuhn he was prepared to rule against baseball, but Busch and the other hard-line owners insisted they would win in court. They didn't, and thus began the era of free agency.
Bowie Kuhn addressing members of the news media in 1970 when he suspended Denny McLain, a star pitcher for the Detroit Tigers.
A couple of weeks ago, I called Kuhn in his room at the hospital in Jacksonville the day before he was to undergo surgery on his lungs. While he struggled at times to get his breath, he still sounded authoritarian - which I made a point of telling him - as we talked about old times.
"You remind me of a conversation I had years ago with Danny Kaye, who as owner of the Mariners was one of my all-time favorite people," he said. "He sounded so great and upbeat and then, the next day, I got a call that he had died. I called his wife and said how unbelievable that was, given our conversation the day before, and she said: 'Oh, Bowie, you should know better. Danny was an actor!'"
I guess the old commish was trying to tell me something I didn't want to believe. He was a good man and baseball was better on account of him. Late-night World Series games notwithstanding.
bmadden@nydailynews.com
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