Fay Vincent ‘60 tells a story about Jack Valenti, recently deceased head of the Motion Picture Association of America.

I still smile at the memories of Jack’s brilliant maneuvers. One day I got a call from Barry Diller, who was then running Paramount Pictures and is someone for whom I have genuine affection and hold in very high regard. He told me that Jack was being romanced by baseball team owners to become the next commissioner. This was in the mid-1980s, when the position was open.

Mr. Diller was very concerned, he told me, because we could ill afford to lose Jack, and he wanted me to approve a new contract with substantially greater financial terms in order to dissuade Jack from going to baseball. As I listened it became clear the new deal had already been approved by the big guys in the MPA, namely Messrs. Wasserman and Diller, and I was not being asked for my approval, but rather to ratify what had been done.

So Jack got a big new deal, and soon enough Peter Ueberroth became baseball commissioner.

Years later, I found myself in the role of baseball commissioner. During some idle chatter one day, I asked Bud Selig, then the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers and a longtime leader within the owners’ circle, if they had ever approached Jack to be the commissioner. And here is where Jack’s brilliant move came to light.

Mr. Selig told me they had never had any real interest in Jack for baseball. But he did recall being asked by Edward Bennett Williams, then the owner of the Baltimore Orioles, to do him a favor. Mr. Williams asked Mr. Selig to invite Jack to lunch at the Metropolitan Club in Washington. Mr. Williams, the quintessential insider, told Mr. Selig he did not care what he talked about with Jack. He only wanted the two men to be seen together.

Mr. Williams, who was also Jack’s personal lawyer, explained that he wanted to get Jack a big new deal with the MPAA — and that being seen with the baseball leader would provide him the necessary leverage. Of course I knew the other side of the story and could only marvel at the sheer beauty of the set of moves that produced Jack’s magnificent deal. I also learned how things got done in the business big leagues. Good for Jack.

My Williams interns this summer, due to start in just a week or two, have much more to learn from Ephs like Vincent than they do from me. Why doesn’t someone create a collection of Eph stories like this one?