![]() ![]() He was commissioner for 154 days, by far the shortest tenure of any of the previous six office holders. ![]() Giamatti, a heavy smoker, suffered a heart attack and died on September 1, 1989. ![]() It also hits a melancholic note in retrospect, especially in the way writer and Review editor Paul Barry opens the piece. Which is why in a season without baseball it’s especially invigorating to read this interview with Giamatti, originally published in the Spring 1989 issue of the College Board Review shortly after he took over as MLB commissioner on April 1, 1989. What is spring without baseball? What is summer? We’re finding out this year, as the coronavirus pandemic upends all parts of our daily lives, sports included. It is designed to break your heart,” Giamatti begins "The Green Fields of the Mind.” “You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.” (And, yes, father of actor Paul Giamatti.) “It breaks your heart. Bartlett Giamatti, former president of Yale, one-time head of the National League, and, for 154 days, commissioner of Major League Baseball. But few people have written as eloquently and lyrically about the game and its place in our national consciousness than A. Baseball has inspired a century’s worth of poetry and prose, from Ernest Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” to Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding to scads of memoirs from former players and managers and books tracing the history of America’s pastime. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |