Kuhn and Finley were baseball's odd couple

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Bowie Kuhn oversaw many significant changes during his 15 years as baseball commissioner (1969-84), but chances are he will be best remembered for two things:

The overcoat, or lack thereof, and his ongoing feud with Charlie Finley.

One of Kuhn's worst ideas was moving the World Series to nighttime and prime time in 1971, thereby making it impossible for young fans to stay up for most games on TV and subjecting onsite spectators to frigid fall temperatures.

Then, by watching the games clad only in an expensive suit, Kuhn seemed to be saying, "Coat? Why should anyone need a coat?" His singular point of view left most others cold.

Kuhn, a native of Takoma Park who operated the manual scoreboard at Washington's Griffith Stadium as a young man, was one of those people whose appearance and demeanor suggested -- rightly or wrongly -- that he was aloof and autocratic. When he died March 16 of pneumonia in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., at 80, older fans recalled a man whose slicked-back hair and stern expression marked him as the corporate lawyer he once was.

Of Kuhn's many critics, famed sports columnist Red Smith was among the most vociferous. He repeatedly ripped the commissioner in the New York Times, saying the 1981 players strike "wouldn't have happened if Bowie Kuhn were alive today" and "an empty car pulled up and Bowie Kuhn got out."

Chances are that picture was incomplete. Kuhn loved the game passionately; until the end of his days, he lobbied for the election of boyhood heroes Cecil Travis and Mickey Vernon of the Washington Senators to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Kuhn was seen by players and many others as a tool of the owners who paid his salary. Yet he never hesitated to take off his coat, roll up his sleeves and mix it up with his bosses in behalf of what he always deemed "the best interests of baseball" -- a vague phrase that nicely covered any controversial decisions he cared to make.

Under his aegis, baseball expanded into Canada, realigned the major leagues into two divisions each and instituted league championship series, generated huge TV revenues and witnessed the beginnings of free agency and soaring player salaries. He was the toughest commissioner since the first, Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Among other things, he suspended owners George Steinbrenner of the New York Yankees, Ted Turner of the Atlanta Braves and Ray Kroc of the San Diego Padres for various malfeasances.

His biggest battle, however, was with Finley, who owned the Oakland A's. The pair seemed forever at odds, and the matchup was classic: starchy and formal Bowie against irascible and unpredictable Charlie.