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