Fay Vincent, who took over as Major League Baseball’s commissioner in 1989 and navigated the league through the earthquake-disrupted Bay Area World Series, has died at the age of 86, MLB announced Sunday.

Vincent had undergone radiation and chemotherapy for bladder cancer and developed complications that included bleeding, said his wife, Christina. He asked that treatment be stopped, and he died Saturday at a hospital in Vero Beach, Florida.

“Mr. Vincent served the game during a time of many challenges, and he remained proud of his association with our national pastime throughout his life,” current commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement.

Vincent unexpectedly became baseball’s eighth commissioner following the death of A. Bartlett Giamatti of a heart attack in 1989. Vincent, who was hired as deputy commissioner by Giamatti, a longtime friend, then was forced out three years later by owners intent on a labor confrontation with players.

Vincent’s first major test came a month into the job.

Just before first pitch of Game 3 of the 1989 World Series between the Athletics and Giants, a massive earthquake struck the San Francisco area. Vincent was immediately thrust into action, opting to postpone that night’s game at Candlestick Park, and later the World Series as whole, for 10 days as the area dealt with the earthquake’s aftermath.

“It is becoming very clear to us in Major League Baseball that our concerns, our issue, is a rather modest one,” Vincent said then.

The decision wasn’t universally praised; some thought the World Series should be canceled given the tragedy. But many saluted Vincent’s compassion and decision-making during such a sensitive situation.

“Fay Vincent played a vital role in ensuring that the 1989 Bay Area World Series resumed responsibly following the earthquake prior to Game 3,” Manfred said in his statement.

Turmoil followed Vincent during the remainder of his three-plus-year reign. He had a string of what he called “three-cigar days,” angering owners by becoming the first management official to admit the collusion among teams against free agents following the 1985, ’86 and ’87 seasons.

In 1990, baseball endured a 32-day work stoppage as owners and the union battled over free agency, arbitration and revenue sharing. Vincent ultimately announced a basic accord on the CBA, but the lockout wiped out most of spring training and postponed the start of the regular season by a week.

Later that year, Vincent issued a lifetime ban to New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who had paid a known gambler $40,000 to find dirt on then-New York outfielder Dave Winfield. Steinbrenner was allowed to resume control of the Yankees in 1993.

Vincent issued another lifetime ban in 1992, this time to 1980 NL Rookie of the Year Steve Howe for repeated drug offenses. An arbitrator reinstated Howe a year later.

Under Vincent’s watch, baseball expanded to 28 teams, with the Rockies and Marlins gaining approval from major league owners in 1991 and beginning play in 1993. As part of the expansion, Vincent ordered that the National League pay $42 million of $190 million received in expansion revenue to the American League, and that the AL provide players to the two new NL teams in the expansion draft.

Vincent also was a proponent of realignment and sought to have the Cubs and Cardinals move from the NL East to the NL West as part of a reconfiguration that would begin in the 1993 season. But some teams were against the proposed change — the Cubs fought it through the courts — and the realignment that Vincent sought never took place.

Vincent ultimately resigned in September 1992 — two years before his five-year term was due to end. A month earlier, major league owners had issued an 18-9 no-confidence vote in Vincent, whom some were dissatisfied with due to his involvement in the 1990 labor negotiations, his rules on expansion revenue sharing and his thoughts on realignment, among other issues.

“The commissioner has to look out for the fans, and the owners don’t want to hear me speak that idea,” Vincent said.

Vincent, some owners believed, was too player-friendly.

“I had the conviction that being commissioner was a public trust. I tried to do what I thought was best for the game and the public who cared so much about it,” Vincent said in a 2023 interview with The Associated Press. “I had mixed results. Sometimes I’m pleased with what I did.

“The tragedy of baseball is the single biggest thing I left undone was to build a decent relationship between the owners and the players. I thought somebody would take over after me and get that done. If I died tomorrow, that would be the big regret, is that the players and the owners still have to make some commitment to each other to be partners and to build the game.”

In one of his lasting acts as commissioner, he chaired an eight-member committee for statistical accuracy, which removed the asterisk that had been next to Roger Maris’ entry as the season home run leader and deleted 50 no-hitters. The group defined a no-hitter as games of nine innings or more that ended with no hits.

Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig replaced Vincent as commissioner.

Selig was installed as chairman of the executive council, a new position that made him in effect acting commissioner. He led owners through a 7½-month strike in 1994-95, was voted commissioner in 1998 and remained on the job until retiring in 2015.

A Connecticut native, Francis Thomas Vincent remained in baseball after his resignation, and he served as president of the New England Collegiate Baseball League — a wooden-bat summer league for college stars — from 1998 to 2004. The winner of the NECBL each summer is awarded the Fay Vincent Sr. Cup.

Earlier in his life, Vincent worked as a lawyer in New York City, served as president/CEO of Columbia Pictures and was an executive vice president of Coca-Cola Co., where he ran its entertainment division.

He recorded interviews with Hall of Fame members and Negro Leagues players for an oral history project that led to three books: “The Only Game in Town” (2006), “We Would Have Played for Nothing” (2009) and “It’s What’s Inside the Lines That Counts” (2010). In 2024, he made a $2 million gift to Yale to endow the Yale baseball coach’s position in the name of his father.

In 2019, Vincent disclosed that he had been diagnosed with leukemia.

“My diagnosis means the game of life is turning serious and the late innings loom,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal Op-ed.

“I cannot let the way my life comes to an end destroy the way I would like to be remembered. Dying is still a part of living, and the way one lives is vital, even in the dying light.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.