Bowie Kuhn: The Fifth Commissioner of Baseball

Bowie Kuhn: The Fifth Commissioner of Baseball

After General William Eckert was sacked at the end of 1968, Bowie Kuhn -- a lawyer who had been counsel to first the National League and then Major League Baseball, was appointed interim commissioner. In 1970, he was given the job with a 7-year contract.

Derided as the "Village Idiot" by legendary Oakland A's owner Charlie Finley (who should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame but is not), Bowie Kuhn served as MLB Commissioner during arguably its most important epoch aside from the founding of the two major leagues, as he oversee the volatile era that saw the  end of baseball's reserve clause and the advent of free 
agency. 

He was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame, while his great rival, union boss Marvin Miller (the man who freed the slaves from the reserve clause) has not been.

Ford Frick: The 3rd Baseball Commissioner

Ford Frick: The 3rd Commissioner of Baseball

Ford Frick was a sports writer who ghosted articles and a book for Babe Ruth, "The Sultan of Swat." Hired to be the National League's public relations director, he soon was made league president. He supported the integration of baseball in that capacity, and succeeded Happy Chanler as the second commissioner of Major League baseball. In that capacity, he oversaw the expansion of baseball to the West Coast and the expansion of the two leagues from eight teams playing a 154 game schedule to 10 teams with a 162-game schedule. He will forever be associated with the asterix he appended to Rger Maris' home-run record, when the Yankees' right fielder broke the single-season home run record of another Yankee right fielder, Frick's former client Babe Ruth, in 1961.

For a biography of the third commissioner, click on the link above: