Fay Vincent, a lawyer who presided over Major League Baseball as its eighth commissioner during a time when it was shaken by labor strife, the first shadows of steroid use and, quite literally, a powerful earthquake that interrupted the 1989 World Series, died on Saturday in Vero Beach, Fla. He was 86.

His death, in a hospital, was caused by complications of bladder cancer, his wife, Christina, said. Mr. Vincent lived in Vero Beach.

Before reaching baseball’s highest office, Mr. Vincent overcame a debilitating injury as a college student to become a law partner, an official in the Securities Exchange Commission, chairman of Columbia Pictures and vice-chairman of Coca-Cola.

But he was most visible to the public in his time as baseball commissioner, from Sept. 13, 1989, to Sept. 7, 1992, rising to that post in a period of grief. He had been deputy commissioner under his good friend A. Bartlett Giamatti when Mr. Giamatti died of a heart attack suddenly at 51. The owners of the major league teams then handed Mr. Vincent the reins.

A little more than a month later, he was present when, shortly after 5 p.m. on Oct. 19, 1989, the Bay Area experienced a severe earthquake — 7.1 on the Richter scale — that caused San Francisco’s Candlestick Park to rumble, as if ready to fall apart.