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 Dog days in Cincinnati Marge Schott's wild ride with Reds comes to a sad ending
Posted: Thursday April 22, 1999 04:50 PM
At her best, Marge Schott was funny and quirky and unique, as hometown as Cincinnati chili or Union Terminal or her beloved Reds. At her worst, she was an insensitive bigot. An unflinching cheapskate. A racist. Marge Schott is on her way out as majority owner of the Reds -- finally, a lot of people will say -- done in by other owners in other towns and by her own inability to keep her mouth shut. When Major League Baseball owners meet in Pittsburgh in early June, they are expected to quick-stamp the sale of most of Schott's shares in the club. And an era in Cincinnati baseball simply will come to an end. Schott lived and breathed her role as the grand dame of the city's most revered institution, and the city loved her for it. Her wardrobe was all garish red and white and polyester, her voice and her face unmistakable to anyone in the Queen City. During baseball season, she could be found in the front row of Riverfront Stadium -- before baseball banned her -- signing autographs and chatting up the fans. She loved the tradition of the city's Opening Day parade, and fought in vain to make the Cincinnati opener the true opening game of the season. She addressed everyone -- fans, media members, city councilmen, players, managers, complete strangers -- as "honey." Almost from the start, she was simply "Marge." From the start, she was all Cincinnati. There was a time in the late '80s when kids around town knew Schottzie, her ever-present Saint Bernard, better than they knew the team's starting second baseman. As the years wore on, the dog would go everywhere with her -- everywhere. Players quietly complained about dodging the piles Schottzie left behind on the Riverfront Stadium turf. In the early '90s, Schott rubbed Schottzie hair on the chest of manager Lou Piniella, for good luck. She once had Eric Davis, now with the St. Louis Cardinals, don a baseball cap with floppy dog ears during a press conference. Last year, she begged Mark McGwire, in the midst of the most historic home run chase in baseball history, to pet Schottzie's successor, Schottzie 02. McGwire is allergic to dogs. He did it anyway. Schott often didn't know the names of her players, or even what division the Reds or their competition were in, but she knew the fans. She spent many of her 15 years with the team trying to keep ticket prices down, demanding that concessions at the ballpark be among the cheapest in baseball.
She was a chain-smoking, animal-loving caricature, and it somehow fit in a conservative Midwestern town. But there was always more to Marge Schott, and that was evident from the moment she became majority owner back in 1984, when she claimed to have "saved" the team from out-of-town buyers. The seller at the time said he was holding out for an in-town buyer all along. Schott notoriously underpaid her employees, and her reputation as a skinflint spread. On more than one occasion, she sent second-hand flowers to people as gifts or condolences. She once had the scoreboard operator stop putting up the out-of-town scores to save $350 a month. She recycled office supplies. And then there was the dark side, the ugly side, the side that even made the city that loved her wince. There was the armband emblazoned with a swastika in her suburban home. The shocking remarks about Jews and African-Americans and Asian-Americans. The lies. The lawsuits. Baseball banned her first in 1993 for racially insensitive remarks, then forced her to give up day-to-day control of the team in 1996. Late last year, under pressure from fellow owners, she agreed to sell her controlling shares of the team. Tuesday, after more legal haggling and the threat of more suits, everything was finalized. Schott will sell most of her shares to the team's limited partners, one of whom is 80-year-old banana tycoon and insurance magnate Carl Lindner, a billionaire who does not bother himself with dogs or parades or fans. Schott will get $67 million, 21 choice lower-level seats, her private box upstairs and an office at Cinergy Field. In the end, Schott's act wore thin even on the people of Cincinnati, who saw her cut player payroll to the bone and watched as the once mighty Reds -- who last won the World Series in 1990 -- slipped into mediocrity and worse. Her racial remarks were embarrassing to a city already touchy about its unbendingly conservative image. In the end, Major League Baseball without Marge Schott is probably better off. Even the Reds, without Marge, probably are better off. In the end, getting the whole ugly mess settled is probably for the best. But, somehow, it's still all very sad. John Donovan is senior writer for CNNSI.com. Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.
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