A. BARTLETT GIAMATTI 1938--1989 : Deputy Commissioner Dislikes Publicity

NEW YORK — The man who may run major league baseball after the death of Commissioner Bart Giamatti is Deputy Commissioner Francis T. (Fay) Vincent Jr., the shy attorney and former head of Columbia Pictures who conducted some of the negotiating that resulted in the banning of Cincinnati Reds Manager Pete Rose from baseball.

Although baseball owners will choose Giamatti’s successor, Yankee owner George Steinbrenner told a New York TV station that he will press for Vincent’s election.

“It’s what Bart would have wanted,” Steinbrenner said. “I’m voting for him. When we lose Bart Giamatti, we lose a man we can never replace. Even Fay would say that.”

As did Giamatti, Vincent took office on April 1. Erudite and scholarly like his predecessor, Vincent, a history buff, has been known to call prominent people to ask them about their roles in history-making situations. But unlike his friend, Vincent prefers to stay in the background. Some would even describe him as bland.

When he was with Columbia Pictures, Vincent spent more time in New York than in Hollywood, and said earlier this year, “I was reasonably invisible, if not anonymous.”

Said Steve Greenberg, an attorney who specializes in representing athletes and is a longtime friend of Vincent: “There’s no question that after (Peter) Ueberroth and Giamatti, he has a very different media image. But it goes to what you want in a commissioner. Do you want flash and dash? Then Fay’s not your guy. If you want substance and a job done well, Fay’s your guy.”

Vincent and Giamatti became friends more than a dozen years ago. When Giamatti asked Vincent to join him in baseball last fall, Giamatti said, “I was looking for someone with the background and skills complementary to my own. It occurred to me that I had a friend who fit the bill. Then an owner said to me, ‘Have you thought of Fay Vincent?’ ”

Vincent, 51, is heavy-set, wears dark-rimmed glasses and speaks quietly and precisely. His nickname, Fay, is short for Francis in Irish communities, he said.

Vincent walks with difficulty, aided by a cane. As an 18-year-old freshman at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., he was locked in his room as a prank and the only way out, he believed, was through the window and along a ledge to another room. But the ledge was icy and he fell four stories, breaking his back.

The injury did not deter him from the legal path he had set for himself. After graduation from Yale Law School, he practiced corporate law for 15 years with firms in New York and Washington. For four months in 1978, he served as associate director of corporate finance for the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Then, in June 1978, he was called by investment banker Herbert Allen, a friend who had been two years behind him at Williams. Allen wanted him to join Columbia Pictures Industries, which Allen’s family investment firm, Allen & Co., controlled. Columbia was suffering from the embezzlement scandal surrounding then-studio chief David Begelman.

The Columbia board of directors was about to oust president Alan Hirschfield and Allen wanted Vincent to take over. Vincent’s unfamiliarity with the film and TV business was deemed a plus.

“Nobody knows him,” Allen was quoted as saying in the book, “Indecent Exposure.” “Nobody can lay a glove on him. We need a Judge Landis.”

Vincent said the challenge was worth the risk.

“I was 40,” he said recently. “Herbert said, ‘What do you have to lose? Nobody expects you to succeed, and if you fail you go back to being a lawyer. If you succeed, you’ll have a lot of fun and make a lot of money.’ So I had to try it.”

He succeeded by most standards. He helped re-establish Columbia’s credibility and ended the company’s political strife; positioned Columbia for Coca-Cola’s $750-million acquisition in 1982, and presided over the acquisition of Merv Griffin Enterprises for $200 million, Embassy Communications for $267 million and Tandem Productions for $178 million.

In one of his most-publicized moves, Vincent hired flamboyant British producer David Puttnam to run Columbia in 1986, but Puttnam, an outsider harshly critical of the Hollywood Establishment, was gone only a year later, having offended top Columbia stars such as Bill Cosby and Bill Murray.

“I think if we’d done it over again, we’d have done things differently,” said Vincent. “But I think it was terrific to break out of the usual mold and hire someone different.”

Vincent was also on board when Columbia released the Warren Beatty-Dustin Hoffman flop, “Ishtar.”

In a decade at Columbia and then Coca-Cola, Vincent rose to become executive vice president of Coca-Cola and president of its Entertainment Business Sector. In late 1987, he was shifted to running Coca-Cola’s bottling-company investments. He left in July 1988 to return to his old law firm, Caplin & Drysdale.

Vincent began working with Giamatti and Ueberroth for several months before taking office. His experience was put to use during negotiations for the new CBS and ESPN network and cable television agreements, which go into effect next year.

Vincent said that the switch to baseball was more in line with his own interests, which do not include much of movies or TV.

“The underlying subject matter of television and movies is not something I had a passion about,” he said. “But all my life, I’ve been addicted to baseball. That makes a difference.”