Sports

Schott With Her Own Gun

Marge's uncanny ability to shoot herself in the foot has finally ended her Reds reign

BY BILL PETERSON

She lives the lonely tyranny of self-deception, alienating the people she needs, awaiting support from her enemies, never learning, always believing in the better angels of an America she's never understood.

She married into money and, belittling people of class, race and ethnicity for whom she has no use, still fancies herself a champion of the little guy.

Entirely missing the unwritten rules of contemporary public life, she believes her ways are mandated by a few, powerless supporters - simple, kindly, untraveled people who have fallen for her innocent side and resolutely ignore numerous accounts of her malevolent ignorance.

Today, nobody can save Marge Schott. She can, perhaps, fight Major League Baseball, which has secured from her an agreement handing control of the Reds to John Allen until she sells her general partner shares. But she would have to pay high-powered bucks for a high-powered attorney. That's highly unlikely. She thinks justice is supposed to be free. She just doesn't understand.

And that's really where it all boils down. In lore, Schott will forever be linked with racism. In truth, she probably is little, if at all, more racist than a lot of other people calling the shots in America. Her mistake is that she never learned what they already know. They know about the system, they know about business, they know about fame in the 20th century.

All she knows is what she wants. And she can't have that.

She wanted to hold on to her car dealerships. Evidently, she thought she could make her sales quota by sending to General Motors phony car deals using the names of Reds employees. Little did it matter to her that GM had been watching her every move for almost 20 years, waiting for her to slip. Little did it matter that Major League Baseball watched her every move for more than five years, waiting for her to slip. She couldn't figure it out. And she slipped.

Schott lived an American Dream dressed in fame and money. But she didn't understand either one. Of the two, she obviously preferred fame. That's what got her.

She could have continued running the Reds into the ground, untouched by the system, if she had only kept a low profile. Once it became clear her social views would be her undoing, she expounded them at every opportunity. She should have kept her mouth shut. But she didn't want to own the Reds on those terms. It would have defeated the purpose of owning them.

So little does Schott understand the world in which she lives that she has offered her views even as "politically correct" became one of the country's most repeated catch phrases. Many people still argue about what, exactly, political correctness is, but the Schott case is instructive, because if her speech had been politically correct, she could have gotten away with being a racist. Indeed, racism and political correctness can, and often do, reside in the same persons.

Political correctness, most simply, is a code of etiquette for public discourse, recognizing that it is impolite and inappropriate to slur races and ethnicities. It is a call to civility, an attempt to constrain the vocabulary through which divisive issues are to be discussed by words and terms that are respectful.

Of course, it isn't really that simple, for the notion of political correctness introduces manifold tensions between advocates of an equitable society and champions of free speech. Presumably, the tension will not touch individuals, for anyone who desires an equitable society probably is respectful enough of races and ethnicities to speak about them politely.

And the PC police desire not simply a polite basis for dialogue but the eradication of racism altogether, believing that changes in the way people talk will ultimately change their beliefs. Despite free speech tensions, the case for political correctness is so powerful that even boosters of an oppressive social order, in order to make their points sound respectable, have learned to code their public language. But Schott didn't know the code.

Major League Baseball's actions with regard to Schott should leave no doubt about how the national pastime gauges the mood of America. It's worth remembering that baseball suspended Schott in 1996 not for being a racist, but officially, for uttering racial slurs. Baseball had already suspended her in 1993 for the similar offenses, strong evidence of her racism.

Before 1992, Schott was a relatively harmless embarrassment. Though she long before had been known in the Reds offices as a monster, there was little baseball could do. Though she embarrassed the game with her incoherent salute to the troops "in the Far East" on national television at the 1990 World Series, baseball couldn't very well suspend her for it.

She didn't understand that baseball is a spectacle. It is, as it calls itself, The Show. She thought people go to baseball games for the same reason they go to Wal-Mart - because they're willing to sacrifice frills to save money. But baseball club owners don't shop at Wal-Mart. They want nice parties, amenities and, most of all, a clean show for the public. The elites want to celebrate the World Series in style, and she denied them the pleasure.

When the dirt started to come out about Schott with former controller Tim Sabo's wrongful firing suit, Major League Baseball faced numerous other problems and hoped the story would die. But it couldn't ignore a torrent of stories that continued for months. "The men," as she often called them, would have been better disposed toward other owners, but Schott hadn't earned any favors.

Doubtless, Schott encountered vigorous corporate resistance as a woman in ownership when she inherited a number of businesses on the death of her husband, Charlie Schott, in 1968. In the 1990s, she continued, groundlessly, to intimate sexism as the cause of her baseball troubles.

Only William Bennett's legal representation enabled her to maintain control of the club in her 1993 showdown with the commissioner's office. But Bennett cost more than $400 per hour, and that was the last time Schott hired a big-time attorney.

Major League Baseball would have let Schott go along her way when she returned after the 1993 season, but she still didn't tow the line. In 1994, she refused to sign the resolution to cancel the World Series.

That, however, was nothing next to the 1995 playoffs. Simply to save money, the Reds made post-season tickets available only to people who came to the stadium ticket window between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. with cash.

The result - thousands of empty seats for the playoffs just as baseball tried to recover its image after the strike - sent officials reeling. She also refused, as on other occasions, to provide the infrastructure mandated by the commissioner's office to facilitate free publicity offered by the media. And there were no post-game parties during the playoffs, either. Meanwhile, the Atlanta Braves were budgeting $250,000 for each post-game party.

Arguably, such amenities are unnecessary. But Schott's refusal to provide them was a nuisance, an indication that she didn't sufficiently respect the game's higher powers or the importance of putting a glitzy face on the championship playoffs. Major League Baseball was fed up with Marge Schott.

As the 1996 season began, Schott set her own trap. On Opening Day, she allowed a reporter to follow her. Seven minutes into the game, home plate umpire John McSherry collapsed and later died. Schott expressed remorse, but it was over the ruin of Opening Day. Thus began a chain of public relations blunders.

She tried to recover by doing further interviews, first with ESPN, then with Sports Illustrated. Her advisers begged her to not do interviews. She wouldn't listen. For ESPN, she reiterated her infamous views about Adolf Hitler. For Sports Illustrated, she disparaged working women and the success of the Japanese in America.

That was it. Baseball kept wanting reasons to get rid of her, and she kept providing them. She gave baseball reasons for wanting to be rid of her, followed by reasons for having to be rid of her. Schott might have been handled more gently when serious problems transpired, but she had always undercut grounds for lenience beforehand.

With the alleged phony GM deals, she has given Major League Baseball another reason to punish her.

Now Schott will have to sell the Reds. And she'll think herself a martyr. Again, she doesn't understand. Some of the people she has hurt the most with her slurs - fellows like Dave Parker, Eric Davis and Barry Larkin - have expressed sadness, even pity for her.

Their pity isn't the feeling one would have for a martyr, a person who suffers over loyalty to high principle. Schott's principles are dubious.

Pity toward Schott is the feeling one would have toward a person who is in over her head. Fortunately for all, she won't be in over her head much longer.

SPORTS is sports, in this space every week. Contact Bill at CityBeat, 23 E. Seventh St., Suite 617, Cincinnati, OH 45202, or e-mail him at letters@citybeat.com

CityBeat, Vol. 4, Issue 49; October 29-November 4, 1998