Marge Schott

Marge Schott is a special case in my rogues gallery of eccentric millionaire baseball team owners. Her tenure as the majority owner of the Cincinnati Reds was concurrent with my formative years as a young Redlegs booster--the last time the Reds won the world series (1990) was during her reign--and so it may then be understandable that I am partial to her. Not that Schott is an easy person to like--in fact, it's probably not socailly acceptable for anyone to like her considering the plethora of inflammatory, derogatory, and downrigt Nixonian statements she made during her public lifetime about various minority groups (or, um, pretty much ALL minority groups). Affection for Marge Schott in reality was probably a little like trying to cuddle a cactus, but the lady had gumption--any woman trying to hold a position of power in a traditionally male dominated arena has to be spunky, and at least twice as much of an asshole as the biggest asshole man in the same field. And so, I give you: Marge Schott.

A Cincinnati native born August 28, 1928, Margaret Unnewehr was one of five daughters born to a strict Catholic father whose desire for a son was perpetually disappointed. Edward Unnewehr raised Marge to be tough and paranoid, to not show weakness, and to eventually take over the family business (a hardwood and veneer manufacturing company which ensured that the family was fairly well-off). Ed nicknamed Marge "Butch," and she played the part of surrogate son pretty well, cracking wise and smoking cigars at slumber parties. It was a disappointment for Ed when, in 1952, Marge married Charles Schott, the son of a wealthy Cincinnati society family, and left the business to (attempt) to be a good Catholic housewife.

It turned out that Marge learned more about business after getting married and hanging around her father-in-law--a man who at one point in his career was the largest automobile dealer in Ohio--than she did about being a homemaker. This education was most likely the best part of her marriage; the couple were unable to have the children Marge so desperately wanted, and Charlie was a notorious alcoholic, gambler and womanizer. Her new husband left her alone in their hotel room on their wedding night to go to a card game, not exactly a good sign of times to come. He died of a heart attack in 1968, found in his mistress' bath tub. This infidelity may be what later triggered Marge to wage a full-scale Big Brother-esque surveillance war on her unfortanate players: opening their mail, video taping their movements in and out of hotels and buses, and even keeping detailed phone logs of every call in and out of the clubhouse. She was always worried about the groupies professional sports attracted, and made it her personal business to keep them away from her players (married or not).

It was in December of 1984 that she purchased a controlling interest in the team for a reported $11 million. The next year she was named President and CEO, and thus began her career as one of the most notorious, infamous and outspoken owners in baseball.

Marge was never strapped for cash, but her personal experience running and helping to run the family businesses made her a notorious cheapskate. She never bought clothes for herself, she kept the heat in her businesses turned down to 55, and any expense over $50 was to be approved by her personally. She would only agree to an expense (say, an order of paperclips for the front office) after getting at least 3 bids from 3 different suppliers.

According to Marge: "You're spending millions and millions out on the field for these players, honey, and you find yourself arguing about envelopes and paperclips in the office. You try to cut on the silly stuff. It's like Disneyland on the field and the real world in here." To which one employee reportedly said: "No, it's like Disneyland on the field and Bosnia in here." Harsh!

But players often felt the pinch too: broken bats were sent to a downtown Cincy hotel, which sold them as souveniers. Extra bats were not bought for players, so they would have to pay for their own replacements. No extras as far as clothing goes either: hats, sweatshirts and jackets were all bought on the players' dime.

At least some of the players took these things in stride. Barry Larkin, the 1995 National League MVP, didn't complain much: "The only thing I don't like is when the dog [Schottzie] takes a crap at shortstop, because I might have to dive into that shit." Indeed. Schottzie, Marge's massive Saint Bernard, would trot out onto the field before each game to much fanfare--especially when she had some "business" to take care of.

And then there's the case of her MANY publicly documented racial slurs. There can be no excuse for those, exept maybe that she was from a conservative and notoriously racially segregated city, grew up in a time and family where bigotry was just an accepted fact of life, and was widowed and leading a very isolated life at only 39 years old. Reading interviews with her today suggest that she was probably like your typical, oldschool white grandma after one too many, which is fine, except that this old lady had reporters and cameras recording what she said about Jews, black people, Hitler, Asian-Americans, etc. etc. etc.

In the end, Marge got herself forced out of baseball in 1999 when she agreed to sell her majority share rather than be ousted by her partners, but every reporter in the area was eagerly holding the microphone and giving her every opportunity to dig her hole deeper and deeper. I won't say baseball was better off with Marge Schott than without, but I do miss the fact that the most expensive ticket at Riverfront stadium during Marge's tenure was $11.50, by far the lowest in the sport at the time (contrast that with $300 today). I miss her ban on players wearing jewellry and ugly goatees and grandstanding like clowns. I also miss the fact that baseball once had a woman, however derided and disliked and prickly, in a position of power and influence. And yeah, I also miss Schottzie.

Source: Reilly, Rick. "Heaven Help Marge Schott" Sports Illustrated 84 No. 20 (May 20, 1996)

Charles O. Finley: Baseball Messiah

One of my acute interests related to baseball is the area of eccentric team owners. Having lived through Marge Schott's tenure as owner of my beloved Cincinnati Reds, I grew up rather accustomed to the odd habits, idiosyncracies and foul language associated with her reign. She wore sweatsuits everywhere, smoked enormous cigars that would've made Castro blush, and had what an old homeroom teacher of mine would describe as "diarrhea of the mouth." I loved Schottzie, her enormous St. Bernard who was always with her. It was a tradition at Riverfront Stadium to have Marge trot out the horse-sized dog before a game, and it was rather disappointing for the fans if Schottzie failed to drop a horse-sized dump on the field (for luck).

Recently I have been doing some research on another distinguished member of the wacky team-owning millionaire's club: Charley O. Finley. Finley purchased the Kansas City Athletics in 1960 and immediately set about the business of "making his mark" on the club, which really means that he started pissing off the locals right away.

In those days team uniforms were either white or grey, depending on whether it was a home or away game. The first thing Finley did was change the team colors to a garishly tacky bright green, gold and white. The A's mascot (for some reason) was a (fictional) elephant. Finley bought the team a live mule, replacing the theoretical pacyderm with the very real Charley-O (consider the neglected logic behind these mascot choices: among the entirety of the animal kingdom, would anyone rational really pick either an elephant or a mule to represent a team named the "Athletics"?) As soon as Finley came to town, he promised the city he would keep the team in KC, but almost immediately began a semi-secret campaign to move the team to another city. It was very nearly my hometown's fate to become a major league city in 1964, when Finely signed a lease for Fairgrounds Stadium (now Cardinal Stadium) in Louisville, Kentucky. He wanted to rename the team the Kentucky Colonels, thereby keeping the caps from Kansas City with the interlocking "KC" symbol. He essentially decided on Louisville just to save money on hats. It was not to be however: the league prevented this move for reasons I have not been able to really nail down (though I suspect its because they reasoned that Louisville is not a big enough market.) He rose an enormous stink, and was finally allowed to move the team to Oakland in 1968.

Once in California, Finley began really stirring the pot. He maintained that the sport was in trouble because it was not changing with the times; baseball would die, he argued, if allowed to exist without "new innovations." Innovations, for instance, like petting zoos in the bleachers, sexy ballgirls, orange baseballs, an underground ball-delivering mechanical rabbit, and, especially, facial hair. Finley paid his players a $300 bonus if they grew moustaches, which led to Rollie Fingers adopting his signature handlebar lip-duster.

The designated hitter rule was his invention, as was the designated runner. The very first electronic scoreboard was Finley's doing. Wanting to shorten games and create "more action," he pushed for the league to change a walk to 3 balls, and an adoption of a two-strike strikeout. Many of the more hair-brained ideas were actually tested in a few spring training games, but was not approved by the league, although his DH rule was adopted and is still in use in the American League today.

Reading about Finley's career makes you realize that, while this guy was hilarious and really fun to read about because of his against-the-grain hijinks, you wouldn't exactly want him anywhere near your town. Finley's life story contains the sort of material that made Will Ferrell a star. In fact, Semi Pro reminds me a lot of Charles O. Finley--Ferrell's player-manager character could BE Finley. In fact, Finley actually owned an ABA team in 1972: the Memphis Pros, which he of course immediately renamed (The Memphis Tams: an acronym for Tennessee Arkansas and Mississippi). Until some filmmaker realizes what a gold mine his life is for biopic material and makes Sexy Ballgirls: the Charles O. Finley Story, I'm going to treat Semi Pro as Finley's unnofficial biography.