A recent baseball POD

Relatively recent--within the last 25 years, anyhow.

All right, this is the proposition: in the late 1980s, Bart Giamatti, educator and renaissance man in addition to passionate baseball fan, held the post of commissioner. A truly literate man with a sense of humor, he might well have been the best commissioner the game ever had--had it not been for his untimely/early death in 1989.

So let's suppose that within a routine physical exam, Giamatti's cardiac problems were uncovered and addressed, such that he did not die in 1989 but continued on for another ten or fifteen years, easily. How does that affect the history of the game, particularly the steroid revolution of the late 1990s?
 
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Well one thing we can't ignore, even before we get to steroids, is the utterly poisonous atmosphere that the owners' collusion against the player had fostered.

Then we have the 1990 lockout. Would Giamatti work as hard as Vincent did in getting agreement both sides could (temporarily) live with? I tend to doubt it.

If he does though, he might very well suffer the same fate that Vincent did; a revolt by the owners. And if he doesn't, relations between the players and owners get worse than OTL.

The years of baseball peace (unheard of in US sports [without smashing a union at least]) that came about after the '94 strike could all be butterflied away. For better or for ill.

Speaking of 'for better or for ill', baseball recovered and became more popular than it has ever been (in count of raw attendance) in large part because of the offensive explosion of the 90s. Clamp down a bit on steroids and ironically baseball might not be in as good of a place as it is now in the (so-called) post-steroid era.

It is funny though that Bud Selig, for all of the very real negative things one can say about him, did realize that 1994 could never be allowed to happen again. He did realize that making peace with a highly suspicious union was the best thing to do for the sport. And say what else you will about him (and I can say plenty ;)) he has overseen unprecedented growth and popularity of the sport at the local level.

One of the problems with this question is that Giamatti has been mythologized to a large degree. He simply wasn't on the job long enough to really get an idea of what he might have done. I know that he was publicly dismissive of the idea that collusion really happened. Which... isn't the best of signs, IMO. But as I alluded to above, the real problem in the early 90s is that not only was there was a group of owners who were wishing to 'break' the players union but there was also a group that wanted to reign in the commisioner powers as well.

How Giamatti deals with those twin problems will matter before steroids starts to really enter the picture.
 
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