Tuesday, March 09, 1999
Reds partner was strong voice
Kroch took on Schott
BY TOM GROESCHEN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Carl A. Kroch, the Cincinnati Reds limited partner who was a longtime adversary of team General Partner Marge Schott, died Saturday of natural causes at his home in Chi cago. He was 84.
Kroch died two days before Monday's meeting of Reds partners, at which the sale of the team to Larry Dolan was discussed. It is not clear what will become of his one share in the Reds.
Kroch purchased a share of the team on Feb. 17, 1981, the era when brothers James R. Williams and William J. Williams ran the Reds. He was a friend of the Williams brothers from their prep school and college days in the East. Kroch was a 1935 graduate of Cornell University.
William J. Williams, who was to have dinner with Kroch this weekend in Cincinnati, remembered his friend as a remarkable, up-by-the-bootstraps businessman who loved baseball and the Reds.
“He was a very hard work er, very intelligent and very loyal,” Williams said. “If you needed something, he would just about give you the store. A wonderful man. He loved flying here for the games.”
Kroch, who in January resigned as a board member for Western-Southern Life Insurance Co., was Schott's most vocal critic inside the Reds'
partnership.
Schott became general partner in December 1984. Kroch frequently complained that the limited partners were left out of decisions concerning the club.
As early as 1986, Kroch said Schott had to be removed as CEO. At the time, Kroch wanted Schott ousted for giving herself a $133,000 attendance bonus and selling one of her shares of the club back to the partnership for $1.6 million.
In 1988, he sued Schott after saying she failed to keep the partners informed about finances and major developments in the management of the Reds. His action won access to financial records in an out-of-court settlement.
In 1992, Kroch and Reds partner George Strike called for Schott to be barred from baseball for life if she had made racist remarks attributed to her. Schott was suspended but not banned, and Kroch mulled legal action to force her out as general partner.
In 1996, Kroch called Schott “a great embarrassment” after her televised comments that Adolf Hitler was “good in the beginning.” Those comments led to another suspension of Schott.
“He was a guy who always told you what he believed and never minced words,” said John Barrett, CEO of Western-Southern. “He was a true gentleman.”
Kroch cherished his association with the Reds and took it seriously. Schott was not the only member of management to feel his wrath.
When General Manager Jim Bowden fired Reds legend Tony Perez as manager in May 1993, Kroch was outraged.
“I like Tony Perez. The fellow we have to get rid of is Jim Bowden,” Kroch said. “That jerk Bowden didn't have the decency of telling the partners they were making a change, and please quote me on that.”
Kroch built his fortune in the bookselling business. Known in Chicago as “The Baron of Books,” he took a small bookstore and built it into a Chicago empire, Kroch's & Brentano's. The company was not affiliated with other Brentano's stores nationwide.
Kroch insisted on quality service and refused to allow discounts in his bookstores, as chains such as B. Dalton began to do when they arrived in Chicago. That business decision would partly lead to the demise of Kroch's & Brentano's in 1995, by which time Kroch had sold his share of the business.
Kroch was preceded in death by his wife Jeanette.
Visitation is today in Chicago. Services will be private.
— Geoff Hobson contributed
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