Kick Out the Sports!
by Bob Cook

Bob Cook's weekly ruminations on sports appear Mondays in Flak.

The late Marge Schott's ownership of the Cincinnati Reds fit her own description of Adolf Hitler — good at the beginning, but then she went too far.

The public life of Schott, who died March 2 at age 75, was a stiff-walking, gravel-talking, chain-smoking, hard-drinking definition of the word eccentric — a crazy person with money. Her insane devotion to her St. Bernards, always named Schottzie, fulfilled the unwritten rule that anyone so preternaturally attached to a dog will never be a boring sports team owner.

Before Schott, the image of the female sports team owner — thanks to such movies as Slap Shot — was some cold-hearted gold-digger who inherited the team upon her husband's death, was clueless about sports and would kill or move a team to make a handsome profit. Kind of like a more evil Georgia Frontiere, a much-married ex-nightclub dancer who acquired control of the NFL's Los Angeles Rams upon her husband Carroll Rosenbloom's death in 1979, was clueless about sports, fired her stepchildren from the team and moved the Rams to St. Louis in 1995 to make a handsome profit.

And with Schott's stewardship, the reputation of women owners changed to… OK, it didn't change. At least not at the movies, if On Any Given Sunday's harridan of a football team owner is any indication. Given Schott's record, that's not an all-bad thing. Let's put it this way: A reputation as a cold-hearted gold-digger is better than as someone who could hit a triple crown of insensitivity — racism, anti-Semitism and dishonoring the dead.

The daughter of a Cincinnati industrialist, Schott didn't enter the business world herself until her husband's sudden death in 1968, to which General Motors responded by trying to take away the car dealerships she had inherited. GM threw in the towel in 1970, and Schott became the first woman to own a GM dealership in a major metropolitan area.

Schott loved her hometown almost as much as her dogs, and for that reason bought a controlling stake in the Reds in 1984, when she feared the team might be sold to an out-of-town group. With Schott signing the checks, the Reds, whose Big Red Machine championship days had ended with the advent of free agency, turned their fortunes around and won the World Series in 1990. Schott, for all her nuttiness, appeared to be a standard-bearer for women in business.

Over time, though, the dark side of her eccentricity popped up. While she spent money on players, Schott was a front-office cheapskate who pinched pennies by gutting the team's scouting and promotions departments, and making outfielder Eric Davis pay for his own ticket home after he got injured in the World Series. Of course, as the continuing existence of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays attests, being cheap does not get you thrown out of baseball.

But referring to players as "million-dollar niggers" — now that can get you in trouble. That remark, as well as Schott's ownership of an armband with a swastika on it, came to light in 1992 during depositions for an unsuccessful wrongful termination lawsuit by a fired Reds employee. In the span of a few weeks, Schott also was alleged to have dropped more n-bombs before an owners' conference call, and she made her first reference to Hitler's little-known good side in the New York Times. She also told the Times she had only used racist language in jest. Baseball didn't get the joke. Schott was suspended for the 1993 season.

Schott's return brought more trouble. The Reds had traditionally been a conservative organization. From 1954 to '59 they played as the "Redlegs" to avoid the Communist taint of "Reds" — so it was no shock that Schott wouldn't allow her players to wear earrings. However, her justification was rather jarring: "Only fruits wear earrings." Meanwhile, she was firing manager Davey Johnson for living with his girlfriend.

Schott's year of doom was 1996. On Opening Day, umpire John McSherry dropped dead of a heart attack in the first inning, forcing the postponement of the game, much to Schott's chagrin. "I feel cheated," Schott said. "This isn't supposed to happen to us, not in Cincinnati. This is our history, our tradition, our team."

Then, someone once again asked Schott for her deepest thoughts on Hitler, and she was glad to respond. "Everything you read, when he came in he was good," she said on ESPN. "They built tremendous highways and got all the factories going. He went nuts, he went berserk. I think his own generals tried to kill him, didn't they? Everybody knows he was good at the beginning but he just went too far."

And that was when the Allies started storming Schott's bunker. She gave up control of the team and eventually sold all but a small share of it. (At the same time, she also was losing her Chevy-Geo dealership under allegations it falsified data to show it met sales quotas.) Before she left us, she was suing current Reds owner Carl Lindner for giving her crappy seats in the Reds' new ballpark.

No one could ever quite put a finger on why Schott's vile brain had such a direct connection to her mouth. She wasn't all bad: She lavished some of the $67 million she earned selling the Reds onto Cincinnati schools and charities. She had a genuine love and passion for baseball in her hometown.

Then again, as Schott would tell it, Hitler built highways and had a genuine love for Germany. But obviously no one remembers that. Except Schott. Which is why she'll be remembered more for what she did wrong than what she did right.

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.