A. Bartlett Giamatti
American scholar and author. Born in Boston and raised in South Hadley, Massachusetts, Giamatti spent much of his life at Yale University. There he earned his bachelor's and doctorate degrees, was a professor of English, and began his tenure as Yale's youngest-ever president in 1978. Eight years later he left Yale and turned to his first love: baseball. Giamatti was named president of the National League in 1986 and commissioner of Major League Baseball in 1989. Just five months after assuming his dream job, he died suddenly of a heart attack at age fifty-one. Author of eight books, Giamatti published influential scholarly volumes such as
Play of Double Senses: Spenser's Faerie Queene (1975) and books about the role of academia in American culture such as The University and the Public Interest (1981). His lyrical essays about baseball are collected in A Great and Glorious Game (1998). See also baseballlibrary.com.