Bowie Kuhn speaks to reporters in this 1970 file photo. The former baseball commissioner died Thursday at age 80.

Bowie Kuhn was baseball’s bespectacled Ivy League lawyer and looked the part every day of the tumultuous 15 years he ruled as commissioner.

Prim and proper with wire-rim glasses, he stood ramrod straight – all 6-foot-5 of him. Detractors called him a “stuffed shirt” and “pompous,” labels that amused him.

Despite his regal bearing, he was as ornery as the owners and players he feuded with over a span that became the second-longest tenure among nine commissioners.

Kuhn, who oversaw the sport’s transformation to a business of free agents with multimillion-dollar contracts, died Thursday at St. Luke’s Hospital in Jacksonville, Fla., following a short bout with pneumonia that led to respiratory failure, spokesman Bob Wirz said. Kuhn, who was 80, had been hospitalized for several weeks.

“He led our game through a great deal of change and controversy,” commissioner Bud Selig said. “Yet, Bowie laid the groundwork for the success we enjoy today.”

Kuhn loved baseball long before he moved into its main office on Park Avenue, having worked as a manual scoreboard operator at Washington’s Griffith Stadium.

When Kuhn took over from William Eckert on Feb. 4, 1969, baseball just had completed its final season as a tradition-bound 20-team sport, one with no playoffs, a reserve clause and an average salary of about $19,000.

Kuhn battled the rise of the NFL and a combative players’ union that besieged him with lawsuits, grievances and work stoppages. Yet it was also a time of record attendance and revenue and a huge expansion of the sport’s television presence.

“He wore the mantle really well. He liked being commissioner,” Yankees manager Joe Torre said. “He never seemed to compromise on what he felt he needed to do.”

Along with Kuhn’s bumpy reign came a string of controversial decisions.

When Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run to break Babe Ruth’s career record in 1974, Kuhn was not in the stands. And he banned Mays and Mantle – Hall of Famers both – from associating with their former teams because of liaisons with gambling casinos.

By the time Peter Ueberroth succeeded Kuhn on Oct. 1, 1984, the major leagues had 26 teams in four divisions, a designated hitter in the American League, the first night World Series games, color-splashed uniforms, free agency and an average salary of nearly $330,000.

“I want it to be remembered that I was commissioner during a time of tremendous growth in the popularity of the game,” Kuhn said, “and that it was a time in which no one could question the integrity of the game.”

It was also a time of memorable confrontations. Kuhn did battle with the likes of Charles O. Finley, George Steinbrenner, Ted Turner and Ray Kroc. Finley once called Kuhn “the village idiot.”

He also tangled with former star players like Mays, Mantle and Curt Flood, and union head Marvin Miller.

His downfall came after he presided over a 50-day strike that split the 1981 season in half.

“Bowie was a good guy, and I admired him. Even though we had our disagreements, I never lost my respect for his integrity,” Steinbrenner said through spokesman Howard Rubenstein.

“You’ve got to develop a sense of humor,” Kuhn once said during an interview. “You have to be able to stand back and laugh. That’s invaluable, or you’re apt to go slightly balmy.”

Born in Takoma Park, Md., on Oct. 28, 1926, Kuhn grew up in Washington, D.C., as a fan of the original Washington Senators – yet he allowed the expansion Senators to leave after the 1971 season and become the Texas Rangers. He graduated from Princeton in 1947 and received his law degree in 1950 from Virginia.

Kuhn suspended Steinbrenner in 1974 for two years – later shortened to 15 months – for his guilty plea regarding illegal campaign contributions to President Nixon’s re-election campaign. He then suspended Turner, the Braves owner, in 1976 for tampering with the contract of Gary Matthews.

In 1976, he voided the attempt by Finley’s Oakland Athletics to sell Vida Blue, Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers for a combined price of $3.5 million, saying the deals weren’t in the best interests of baseball.

He fined Kroc, the San Diego Padres owner, $100,000 in 1979 for saying he wanted to sign Joe Morgan of the Reds and Graig Nettles of the Yankees.