How many times can Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott continue to throw spitballs before the fans cry foul?
With any luck, this will be the last time.
Pressured by Major League Baseball officials, Schott has apologized belatedly for her latest remarks praising Adolf Hitler’s early efforts at revitalizing Germany.
Acting Commissioner Bud Selig, who is Jewish and owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, did not discipline Schott but reportedly said he would continue to monitor the situation.
Calling for Schott to sell the baseball team or be suspended were among the Jewish reactions to Schott’s latest comments praising Hitler.
“Everything you read, when he [Hitler] came in, he was good,” said Schott in an interview aired by ESPN Sunday night. “They built tremendous highways and got all the factories going. He went nuts, he went berserk. I think his own generals tried to kill him, didn’t they? Everybody knows he was good at the beginning but he just went too far.”
ESPN interviewer Sal Paolantonio had asked Schott about a swastika she still keeps in her house. The Reds owner discussed the swastika in a November 1992 interview published in The New York Times, and said family members of hers in Germany had suffered during World War II. At that time she also said Hitler was initially good for Germany but went too far.
“The community is pretty upset,” said Aubrey Herman, executive vice president of the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati, in an interview prior to Schott’s apology.
Michael Rapp, executive director of Cincinnati’s Jewish Community Relations Council, called the remarks “outrageous.”
“I am personally appalled, but of all of Marge Schott’s strengths, sensitivity to intergroup relations or knowledge of European history has never been among them,” Rapp said.
A fan boycott or forcing Schott to sell the team are not realistic responses, said Rapp. “Fans didn’t boycott three years ago when she made remarks about Japanese and blacks. By and large, boycotts don’t work. And there’s no way you can force her to sell the team.”
Symbolic achievements like yelling and screaming and picketing may make people feel better, but at the end of the day, there is no real change, Rapp added.
The American Jewish Congress and the Anti-Defamation League issued statements calling on the acting baseball commissioner and other baseball team owners to take action against Schott.
But Rapp said such statements from national Jewish organizations which do not have offices in Cincinnati “are public relations gimmicks and headline grabbers.
“They might play well in New York where their contributors might be.”
Community relations for the Jewish community of Cincinnati must be determined by Jews who live along the Ohio River, not the East River, said Rapp.
“I want an unequivocal public apology to the Jewish community, an acknowledgment that what she said was wrong, hateful and hurtful, and a declaration that she won’t repeat this sort of bigotry again.”
In her apology Tuesday for “offending many people,” Schott did not mention Jews and the Holocaust.
In February 1993, Major League Baseball’s Executive Council suspended Schott for one year and fined her $25,000 because her repeated ethnic and racial slurs brought “disrepute and embarrassment to the sport.”
Another suspension would be “pointless because she will return as unrepentant as ever,” said Phil Baum, AJCongress executive director, in a statement. Selig “should put together a committee at once to find a buyer for the team who would make Schott an offer she can’t possibly refuse and get her out of baseball’s executive suites.”
Alva “Ted” Bonda, majority owner of the Cleveland Indians from 1972 to 1978, said, “I don’t see how this can be tolerated.” While he thinks Major League Baseball should suspend Schott, Bonda does not know if it can force her out of the business.
Schott’s outrageous and insensitive behavior during the last six weeks “has been an affront to common decency,” said Tom Sudow, host of local radio show “Sports Talk for Kids.”
When Umpire John McSherry had a fatal heart attack behind home plate at Cincinnati’s opening game, and the game was postponed, Schott complained about the stoppage. Later, to apologize to the umpires, she sent a basket of flowers previously given to her.
It would be a long and hard fight to get her to relinquish the team, said Sudow.
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