A. Bartlett Giamatti
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Angelo Bartlett Giamatti (April 4, 1938 – 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.
Personal life
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 in about 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 WOLF'S HEAD, and graduated magna cum laude in 1960, marrying Toni Smith that same year. Toni Smith Giamatti taught English for more than twenty years at the Hopkins School in New Haven up 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.
According to his friend, Fay Vincent, in The Last Comissioner, Giamatti's official religion was agnosticism.
Yale
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.
Baseball
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 , that Giamatti suffered from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, an inherited neuromuscular disease affecting peripheral nerves.
Works
- 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)
References
- 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)
External links
- [BaseballLibrary] - profile and events
- [New York Times obituary]
- [Pete Rose / A. Bartlett Giamatti Agreement]
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