We add a second MLB Monday entry tonight to acknowledge the passing of Fay Vincent, former MLB commissioner. He was a decent, good person who tried to the right thing by the sport, and he was forced out by an owners’ coup, basically, that brought about the cheating, corruption, and greed we now see everywhere in baseball, sadly. If Vincent had stayed on as commissioner, maybe Barroid Bonds never is.

Here are some pieces where we’ve referenced him over the past eight years:

The second and fourth pieces in this brief list are significant, since we firmly stand by the assertion that Bud Selig ruined baseball. If Vincent had remain commissioner, the San Francisco Giants would have moved to Florida before the 1993 season, and the Oakland Athletics still would exist, probably with an organizational total of 12-15 World Series titles as the only game in the Bay for the last 30-plus seasons.

This kind of counterfactual “history” is all speculative, but considering how Selig saved and then enabled the Giants? It is probably pretty accurate in terms of “What if?” for Bay Area baseball. Vincent also would have cracked down on PEDs, since he’s the commissioner who officially banned steroids in 1991. He had the ideal fortitude to suspend egos like Pete Rose and George Steinbrenner: moral leadership breeds strength.

You can bet your bottom dollar that Vincent never would have let Bonds stain the sport like Selig did; with a November 2000 positive PED test in hand, Vincent’s leadership style suggests Hank Aaron and his 755 home runs should still be the memories to remember as record holder and achievement. That also means Roger Maris probably is still the single-season HR record holder, too, in our Alternate Timeline of Vincent.

Briefly and lastly, some eulogies from around the ‘net:

Yeah, Vincent was on the good side; his predecessor, Bart Giamatti, was a personal hero of ours, of course, and these were two good men trying to keep a sport on the right side of life. It’s a shame they lost the battle.