Death
While at his vacation home on 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 Pete Rose and 154 days into his tenure as commissioner. He became the second baseball commissioner to die in office, the first being Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Baseball's owners soon selected Fay Vincent, Giamatti's close friend and baseball's first-ever deputy commissioner, as the new commissioner.
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. Son Marcus Giamatti threw out the first pitch before the game. Also before Game One, the Yale Whiffenpoofs sang the national anthem, a blend of The Star-Spangled Banner with America the Beautiful that has been since repeated by other a cappella groups.
Prior to the first game of the 1990 Major League Baseball season, played at Fenway Park, Toni Giamatti threw out the ceremonial first pitch. She would perform the honors again prior to Game 7 of the 1997 World Series.
The Little League Eastern Regional Headquarter in Bristol, Connecticut is named by Giamatti. "Bart" Giamatti was 1992 posthum member of the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame. James Reston, Jr. notes in his book Collision at Home Plate: The Lives of Pete Rose and Bart Giamatti that Giamatti suffered from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, an inherited neuromuscular disease affecting peripheral nerves.
Read more about this topic: A. Bartlett Giamatti
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Life contracts and death is expected,
As in a season of autumn.
The soldier falls.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“your antlers like seaweed,
your face like a wolf’s death mask,
your mouth a virgin, your nose a nipple,
your legs muscled up like knitting balls,
your neck mournful as an axe....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.”
—Elias Canetti (b. 1905)