2,000 Gather at Yale to Mourn Giamatti

With as many laughs as tears, more than 2,000 people joined Friday in mourning the death and celebrating the life of A. Bartlett Giamatti, former Yale University president and baseball commissioner.

The tributes to the 19th president of Yale were filled with references to the great works of literature dear to him, to Giamatti’s own writings and speeches, and to his love for baseball.

Giamatti, a resident of the New Haven suburb of Hamden, died Sept. 1 after suffering a heart attack at his weekend retreat on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. He was 51, and five months into his job as commissioner of major league baseball.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh; Francis T. Vincent Jr., Giamatti’s successor as baseball commissioner; National League President Bill White and a number of elected officials joined members of the Yale community for the memorial service.

Giamatti was remembered by his two sons, Paul and Marcus, Yale President Benno C. Schmidt Jr. and other friends for his wit and wisdom and deep love of learning, his integrity, belief in the importance of civility and his compulsion to always do what was decent.

Giamatti, a noted Renaissance scholar and lifelong baseball fan, was Yale president from 1978 through June, 1986. He became president of baseball’s National League shortly after leaving the university.

“We gather to celebrate a life lived greatly within our walls,” said Schmidt, the first to speak. “We gather in grief, grief that is sharp and sticks in our throats.”

Moving those at the service to both tears and laughter, Marcus Giamatti remembered his father telling him stories from Renaissance literature at the age of 6 and teaching him baseball as a boy of 10, urging him to concentrate his forces while swinging a bat and to “never argue with an umpire.”

“Let no one say, ‘There are no more heroes,’ ” said Giamatti, a graduate of Yale’s School of Drama. “My father is my hero. And when I read the final paragraph of his book, “A Free and Ordered Space,” I know that he is here with me--and that he teaches me still.”

Deans and former deans of Yale College and the graduate and professional schools served as ushers. Priscilla Baskerville, who is appearing in the Metropolitan Opera production of “Porgy and Bess,” sang a Giamatti favorite, “Amazing Grace.”

Speakers said that Giamatti considered teaching the noblest profession, and one that he never put aside.

“Witness these past few months, when he became not only commissioner of baseball but instructor extraordinary to the American sports industry and to Pete Rose,” said Maynard Mack, a professor emeritus of English who was a classmate of Giamatti’s father.

Eight days before Giamatti died, he banished Rose from baseball for life as a result of allegations he bet on baseball games and the Cincinnati Reds, which Rose managed.

Major league baseball is to pay its respects to Giamatti on Oct. 31 at Carnegie Hall in New York.