Baseball Commissioner

Baseball commissioner Fay Vincent was among the VIPs who attended the final game. He sat in a field box beside the Orioles dugout, and he spoke affectionately of the ballpark he visited often during the 1970s, when he worked in Washington."

If you ever had any doubts about the hold drugs can have on a human being, the Otis Nixon case should put them to rest.Here's a 32-year-old man who was having the baseball season of his life. A .228 lifetime hitter, he was having a career year for the Atlanta Braves, batting .297 and leading the major leagues in stolen bases with 72. He was doing this for a first-place team that had taken the city of Atlanta by storm.From a purely personal standpoint, the timing of Nixon's fall could not have been worse.

NEW YORK -- Baseball commissioner Fay Vincent said yesterday that between eight and 10 of the 26 major-league teams lost money last year, and that the sport is headed for leaner times if player salaries continue to escalate.Vincent declined to identify the teams that operated in the red, but he said most play in smaller cities and make less from television contracts than teams in larger cities."No rational person can see what is going on in baseball and not have concerns," Vincent said.He acknowledged that a big problem facing the owners is convincing the players of the crisis at a time when teams are spending more freely than ever.