A. Bartlett Giamatti

In 1960, Giammati married Toni Marilyn Smith, an English teacher at the Hopkins School, New Haven. The couple had three children – sons Paul and Marcus are actors, while daughter Elena is a jewelry designer.

He died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 51. The new research center at the Hall of Fame was named the Giamatti Research Center.

Angelo Bartlett Giamatti was born to Mary Claybaugh Walton and Valentine John Giamatti at Boston, Massachusetts. His father headed the Department of Italian Language and Literature at the prestigious Mount Holyoke College.

Brought up in South Hadley, Massachusetts, he went to the South Hadley High School, and, for a year, to the Overseas School of Rome. He passed out of Phillips Academy in 1956.

He joined Yale University where he was associated with the secret society, Scroll and Key, and was a Delta Kappa Epsilon member. A brilliant student, he graduated in English with high honors, in 1960.

Giamatti received his Doctorate in Comparative Literature from Yale in 1964. He co-edited Thomas Bergin’s essays which were then published. He began to teach Comparative Literature at Yale University’s Ezra Stiles College.

He was fascinated with the works of Edmund Spenser and English Renaissance literature. He focused on the mutual influence of English and Italian poets, and on the Italian poet, Ludovico Ariosto.

Very popular with his undergraduate students, he felt that Renaissance was an evolved product, and the process of evolution started during the Middle Ages. He used the term "Protestant Deformation” to make his point.

In 1972, his tenure as a teacher at Stiles College concluded. His students presented him with a moose head as their parting gift, because it was his wish that they give him a joke gift.

He became the youngest president of Yale University, serving from 1978 to 1986. During his presidency, Yale’s clerical and technical staff went on a strike. He was criticized for not handling the issue properly.

When Giamatti became the President of Yale University in 1978, he tried to regulate its finances that showed $10 million in cumulative deficits. After two years, Yale achieved a ''financial equilibrium.''

As a commissioner for baseball, in 1986, he showed zero-tolerance for dishonest acts, by forcing Cincinnati Red Manager Pete Rose to voluntarily accept a ban from the game for betting on games.