A. Bartlett Giamatti

Giamatti's paternal grandparents were Italian immigrants Angelo Giammattei and Maria Lavorgna : his grandfather Angelo emigrated to the United States from Telese, near Benevento, Italy, around 1900.

Giamatti's maternal grandparents, from Wakefield, Massachusetts, were Helen Buffum (Davidson) and Bartlett Walton, who graduated from Phillips Academy Andover and Harvard College.

Giamatti was born in Boston and grew up in South Hadley, Massachusetts, the son of Mary Claybaugh Walton (Smith College 1935) and Valentine John Giamatti.

His father was professor and chairman of the Department of Italian Language and Literature at Mount Holyoke College.

Angelo Bartlett “Bart” Giamatti (April 4, 1938 – September 1, 1989) was an American professor of English Renaissance literature, the president of Yale University, and the seventh Commissioner of Major League Baseball.

Giamatti served as Commissioner for only five months before dying suddenly of a heart attack.

He is the shortest-tenured baseball commissioner in the sport's history and the only holder of the office not to preside over a full Major League Baseball season.

Giamatti's most notable act as Commissioner was to negotiate the agreement resolving the Pete Rose betting scandal in which Rose was permitted to voluntarily withdraw from the sport to avoid further punishment.

He became the second baseball commissioner to die in office, the first being Kenesaw Mountain Landis in 1944.

Fay Vincent, Giamatti's close friend and baseball's first deputy commissioner, became acting commissioner upon Giamatti's death, and was quickly elected by MLB owners to succeed Giamatti as the new commissioner.

Giamatti attended South Hadley High School, spent his junior year at the American Overseas School of Rome, and graduated from Phillips Academy in 1956.

At Yale College, he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon (Phi chapter) and as a junior in 1960 was tapped by Scroll and Key, a senior secret society.

He graduated magna cum laude in 1960.

In 1960, he married Toni Marilyn Smith, who taught English for more than 20 years at the Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut, until her death in 2004.

Together the couple had three children: actors Paul and Marcus and jewelry designer Elena.

Giamatti stayed in New Haven to receive his doctorate in 1964, when he also published a volume of essays by Thomas G. Bergin he had co-edited with a philosophy graduate student, T. K. Seung.

He became a professor of comparative literature at Yale University, an author, and master of Ezra Stiles College at Yale, a post to which he was appointed by his predecessor as Yale president, Kingman Brewster Jr..

Giamatti taught briefly at Princeton but spent most of his academic life at Yale.

His scholarly work focused on English Renaissance literature, particularly Edmund Spenser, and relationships between English and Italian Renaissance poets.

His tenure as Stiles master ended in 1972.

He also wrote several noteworthy essays about baseball, including "The Green Fields of the Mind", published in the Yale Alumni Magazine in November 1977; "Tom Seaver's Farewell", published in Harper's Magazine in September 1977; and "Baseball and the American Character," published in Harper's in October 1986.

Giamatti served as president of Yale University from 1978 to 1986.

In 1978, when he was first rumored to be a candidate for the presidency of Yale, he had deflected questions by observing that "The only thing I ever wanted to be president of was the American League."

Giamatti was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1980 and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1982.

Giamatti had a lifelong interest in baseball and was a noted Boston Red Sox fan.

Giamatti prohibited students from playing Bladderball on campus after years of increasingly strange pranks and several student hospitalizations in 1982.

He also served on the board of trustees of Mount Holyoke College for many years.

He was the youngest president of the university in its history and presided over the university during a bitter strike by its clerical and technical workers in 1984–1985.

As university president, he refused student, faculty, and community demands to divest from apartheid South Africa.

Giamatti was named president of the National League in 1986.

During his stint in that position, he placed an emphasis on the need to improve the environment for the fan in the ballparks.

He also decided to make umpires strictly enforce the balk rule and cited affirmative action as a remedy for the lack of minority managers, coaches, or executives in the major leagues.

While still serving as National League president, Giamatti suspended Pete Rose for 30 games after Rose shoved umpire Dave Pallone on April 30, 1988.

Later that year, Giamatti also suspended Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Jay Howell for three days, after Howell 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.

He formally took office on April 1, 1989.

Determined to maintain the integrity of the game, on August 24, 1989, Giamatti prevailed upon Pete Rose to agree voluntarily to remain permanently ineligible to play baseball.

While at his vacation home in Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard, Giamatti, a heavy smoker for many years, died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 51, eight days after banishing Pete Rose and 154 days into his tenure as commissioner.

He was interred at Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut.

On October 14, 1989, before Game 1 at the World Series, Giamatti—to whom this World Series was dedicated—was memorialized with a moment of silence.