Saturday, May 22, 1999

Meekly, Marge makes exit

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Outgoing boss stands quietly on the sidelines

BY HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Marge Schott braces herself on a table and a walker. (AP photo) | ZOOM |

        If you had seen Marge Schott on Friday, on a warm spring morning on the Astroturf of Cinergy Field, you would never have imagined that this was how she would make her exit.

        Quietly. Blending into the background. Looking small, frail and sad.

        Not the Marge we had known for 15 years. For all that time, she was — insisted upon being — the center of attention as principal owner of baseball's oldest franchise.

        Good ol' Marge. Loud. Boisterous. Puffing a cigarette. Calling everybody from the governor to the bellhop honey. Dressed in red from head-to-toe, dragging a slobbering St. Bernard wherever she went. Sticking her foot in her mouth. Getting suspended. Rubbing dog hair on her manager's chest for good luck. Sitting in her front-row seat at the ballpark, signing autographs for an endless stream of kids in Reds caps: Woofs and kisses. Love, Marge.

        But there she was Friday, as a host of politicians, front-office personnel and news media crowded around the home plate area of Cinergy Field for a press conference on the signing of a 30-year lease for a new Reds' ball park. Instead of being the center of attention as she was, for good or ill, for 15 years, Ms. Schott was quiet, leaning on a cane.

        There was John Allen, the club's managing executive since Mrs. Schott, 70, was suspended three years ago, explaining the terms of the lease and the promise of the new ballpark. When time came for the press to ask questions, it was Mr. Allen who explained that, “under the terms of Major League Baseball, Mrs. Schott will not be making comments.”

        Not be making comments. Her signature was barely dry on the lease agreement that will mean a new riverfront home for the team she has owned since 1984, an agreement signed just days before the sale of her shares to Carl Lindner and the other limited partners becomes official; and she could not talk.

        Baseball wouldn't let her.

        Baseball, a sport which welcomed her into the ownership ranks back when she was known mostly as a Norwood car dealer, then sat back and watched as the roller coaster ride that was the Schott era.

        There were highs — Pete Rose, the hometown hero Mrs. Schott adored from afar before she bought the team, breaking the all-time hit record on a warm September night in 1985; the exhilaration of the Reds' incredible run to a World Championship in 1990.

        And there were lows — the turmoil surrounding Mr. Rose in 1989, when the player-manager was investigated for gambling on baseball and was suspended from the game; Mrs. Schott's one-year suspension in 1993 for racial slurs and another suspension in 1996 after she told ESPN that Adolf Hitler had been “good at the beginning but he just went too far.”

        Good at the beginning. Went too far. Some thought that was the story of Mrs. Schott as Reds owner as well.

        She seemed, at times, to be two different people. There was the Marge who obviously loved children, who, when a fan asked her to sign a ball for a 6-year-old girl battling cancer, would well up with tears. Then there was the Marge who had a reputation as being a harsh and demanding boss.

        Neither one seemed to be on the field Friday morning. She was not allowed, under her suspension, to have an official role in the lease ceremony, but she did talk briefly with reporters afterwards.

        She brightened momentarily when she caught a glimpse of Cincinnati Councilman Jim Tarbell standing nearby.

        “Hi, honey, how ya doin'?,” she said to Mr. Tarbell, who had led the effort to put the new ballpark at Broadway Commons ins
tead of the riverfront, the site Mrs. Schott preferred.

        The new ballpark, she said, “will be great. Tight fit getting in down here, though. This is great. We're the oldest team in baseball, you know. We draw people from seven surrounding states. Sometimes I see kids from nine different states at one ball game.”

        Is it bittersweet, a TV reporter asked, to sign the lease for a new ballpark and know you won't be around as owner when it opens?

        “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said, waving a dismissing hand. “But you gotta do what baseball wants you to do. It's a boys' club, honey.”

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