Fay Vincent, who became an unexpected baseball commissioner in 1989 following the death of A. Bartlett Giamatti and then was forced out three years later by owners intent on a labor confrontation with players, has died. He was 86.

He presided in a period of union strife, the emergence of steroid use, the banning of Pete Rose and an earthquake that rattled a World Series.

The former top executive at Columbia Pictures and Coca-Cola negotiated a controversial lifetime ban of player-manager Pete Rose for gambling on baseball games.