Sunday, September 12, 1999

Coleman gently pried Schott's fingers off team

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BY GEOFF HOBSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer

National League President Len Coleman speaks at a news conference on inter-league play in 1996. (AP file photo) | ZOOM |

        Len Coleman and Marge Schott. Not exactly a match made in heaven.

        “Marge hates Len. Can't stand him,” said a colleague of Mrs. Schott who asked not to be identified.

        Mr. Coleman, the National League president who has a master's degree from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, is more diplomatic: “After all is said and done, I think we've gotten along.”

        Mr. Coleman has finessed Mrs. Schott's departure from ownership during a sensitive three-year stint in which he had to act more like a NATO ambassador than the NL president.

        Bright and urbane, Mr. Coleman knows Bishop Tutu, could have worked for President Bush, relaxes with the Metropolitan Opera, and is on numerous corporate boards.

        Mrs. Schott, the outspoken Reds owner, is a savvy, crusty businesswoman who has children and elephants for friends. She's a local icon, a graduate of Sacred Heart Academy, member of the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame and once was honored by President Reagan.

        The principals won't discuss their relationship much.

        Mrs. Schott, forbidden by Major League Baseball from talking to the media, has rarely talked to The Enquirer since her June 12, 1996, suspension.

        When Mr. Coleman rehashes the case, he focuses on his relationship with John Allen, the managing executive given the power to run the Reds day to day during her suspension from MLB.

        The Schott-Coleman relationship is still being tested in the final days of her majority ownership, as MLB attempts to satisfy her and her other partners when it comes to which rights she retains.

        Before Mr. Coleman's plan to resign at the end of the season became public Friday, he had been a strong candidate to become Baseball's next commissioner four years from now. His handling of the Schott case had been a major reason why.

        “The Reds had a very public, potentially volatile situation and he was effective, quietly behind the scenes, as he has been on a number of issues,” said Andy MacPhail, CEO of the Chicago Cubs.

        Agreed Rockies chairman Jerry McMorris: “In my eyes, Len just continued to move up in any evaluation. Len was the key person while he stayed in the background.”

        One MLB official said of the Schott situation, “If it wasn't handled right, it could have been a disaster. And it would have been Len who got the blame. But Len knew when to push the buttons, never going too far, and it wasn't a disaster. Far from it.”

        Mr. Coleman's behind-the-scenes style was never more apparent than at a secret meeting at Mrs. Schott's Indian Hill home in June 1998.

        With four months left in Mrs. Schott's suspension, Mr. Coleman quietly dispatched MLB attorney Robert Dupuy and NL counsel Robert Kheel to gauge her feelings about selling the team.

        It was made clear at that meeting, a source said, that she would never regain control of the Reds. Unspoken was a Dec. 4, 1996, General Motors complaint Mr. Coleman had as ammunition.

        The complaint was that Mrs. Schott allegedly had used the names of Reds employees to help falsify car sales. The State of Ohio dropped its complaint when Mrs. Schott sold her Montgomery Chevrolet-GEO dealership in January 1997, but the case gave MLB leverage to extend her suspension until the limited partnership expired, and with it her power as general partner.

        Baseball's lawyers argued that the value of her two general-partner shares went down each day the clock ticked toward Dec. 31, 2000, emphasizing it would be to her economic benefit to sell earlier rather than later.

        For her part, Mrs. Schott, the biggest friend of Cincinnati's world renowned zoo, treated the lawyers to a movie featuring the birth of an elephant.

        The Indian Hill meeting marked the end of Mrs. Schott's reign. The lawyers heard enough to figure she got the message and the owners held off moving against Mrs. Schott later that month at meetings in Seattle. Four months later, Mr. Coleman was able to secure from her an agreement to try to sell the team while Mr. Allen remained in charge.

        “I think Marge respected Len's ability to administer his authority,” said a source close to Baseball.

        “Len educated her on the economics and what her best strategy was, given that her power expired at the end of the limited partnership. He got her estimates and made sure she had the information she needed.”

        It was Mr. Coleman, sources say, who came to Cincinnati in 1996 insisting Mrs. Schott be banned from running the club.

        By all accounts, when it came to Mrs. Schott's checkered track record with minorities, there wasn't much tolerance from Mr. Coleman.

        Mr. Coleman, a civil rights activist since his undergraduate days at Princeton, had been brought into baseball partly to make the game more inclusive of minorities.

        The woman who was said to have referred to her players as “million-dollar niggers” now was up against the chairman of the Jackie Robinson Foundation.

        Their initial, secret meeting was prompted by her behavior that spring.

        Mrs. Schott's series of gaffes began when plate umpire John McSherry collapsed at home plate on Opening Day and later died (“Why can't they play with two umpires?”), continued through an ESPN interview (“Hitler was good in the beginning,”) and culminated in a Sports Illustrated cover story containing insensitive remarks about Asians, Jews and working women.

        Mr. Coleman's lawyers crafted a deal in which Mrs. Schott would back away from managing the club day to day on June 12, 1996, until Nov. 1, 1998.

        Making sure not to stray beyond his powers in the NL constitution, Mr. Coleman said she could choose her replacement. But she retained the right only to be consulted on most decisions and couldn't talk to the media unless Mr. Coleman gave her permission.

        Mrs. Schott chose Mr. Allen, an obscure Kansan in his second year as Reds controller, to run the team. But she turned on Mr. Allen almost immediately, after Mr. Allen went over her head to get Mr. Coleman's approval on everything from new hires to new rugs to new promotions.

        Which is the way Mr. Coleman envisioned the “managing executive” agreement.

        “That's my job. To take the heat instead of a guy like John Allen,” Mr. Coleman said. “I'm not going to bash Marge. The key was making sure the Reds were taken care of, that they remained one of our flagship franchises.

        “John is an open, honest guy, and never once did I sense he was doing anything for himself, but for the good of the franchise. I wanted mainly to serve as a support system.”

        For the most part, the “managing executive” agreement worked. It gave Mr. Allen relief from Mrs. Schott's daily rantings. Mr. Allen's nerves were shot as he expanded and diversified the Reds' front office while also pumping Cinergy Field with promotions. But he was also winning a powerful ally in Mr. Coleman.

        A month after the agreement was signed, Mrs. Schott sent a memo to Reds employees saying she wasn't going away. Mr. Coleman responded by invoking his presidential powers and banned her for nearly a month from her office and Cinergy Field.

        Sources say Mrs. Schott's memo had been hatched by Chicago lawyers she had just hired. They weren't heard from again after Mr. Coleman's response.

        In November 1997, Mrs. Schott told both Cincinnati newspapers and a TV station she liked the idea of a renovated Cinergy instead of a new stadium, statements at odds with Mr. Allen's mission. Mr. Coleman fined her $10,000 for violating her media ban.

        “Those were two seminal moments,” agreed an MLB source. “But Len stayed in close contact with her and the team.”

        Mr. Allen thinks Mr. Coleman has played a key role in the viability of the franchise.

        “He allowed us to maintain our autonomy as a club,” Mr. Allen said. “Never once did he try to get me to change a vote on issues and there were some things we were very vocal on, such as possibly being moved to the American League. But Len let us have our say.”

       

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