Marge Schott

She was born Margaret Unnewehr in Cincinnati, Ohio, on August 18, 1928. The second of five daughters born to Edward and Charlotte Unnewehr, she grew up as a fan of the Reds, Cincinnati's hometown baseball team. Her love of sports strengthened her ties to her father, who called his second daughter "Butch." Of her father, Schott told Sports Illustrated: "My poor father, he kept trying to have a son, and he kept getting girls." Unnewehr eventually brought Marge into the lumber business, but she stayed in the family business only briefly. Between 1950 and 1952, she attended the University of Cincinnati but dropped out after meeting and marrying Cincinnatian Charles J. Schott, heir to an industrial fortune. The couple moved to a 70-acre enclave in Cincinnati's posh Indian Hills neighborhood, where the childless Marge played mother to the family menagerie of animals and gracious hostess at scores of memorable society affairs.

Schott experienced a major personal loss in 1968 when her 42-year-old husband suffered a massive heart attack and died. With little business experience beyond the brief stint with her family's lumber business, Schott suddenly found herself the owner of Schottco Corporation, a holding company for a wide variety of businesses, including a brick manufacturing company, an insurer, a shopping center, a concrete products factory, and an automobile dealership. The dealership, one of the largest in Ohio, had never made much money, so Schott decided to focus her energies on trying to turn Schott Buick around financially. She got little help. General Motors executives were reluctant to turn the franchise over to a woman. When she discovered that some of the dealership's managers were plotting to force her out of the business, she moved decisively, firing the managers and moving up lower ranking employees to fill their slots. Using eye-catching promotions and waving the "Buy-American" banner, Schott managed to turn things around for the dealership. In less than three years, sales at Schott Buick had jumped forty percent, convincing GM that Schott deserved to retain the franchise. By 1980, she had opened a second GM dealership, Marge's Chevrolet.

A lifelong Reds fan, Schott in 1981 became a limited partner in the baseball team. She told the Cincinnati Enquirer she bought her small share in the Reds "as a token of respect to my late husband." The team in the early 1980s had fallen on hard times: attendance was way down and most of the best players had been either sold or traded by the conservative Reds management. With only a small share in the team, Schott felt powerless to end the team's steady decline. She later told the Cincinnati Enquirer: "It was very frustrating sitting back and watching some of the stuff. It just kept getting so bad, it got to the point where finally you have to speak up." Her chance to do something came in 1984 when the Reds' general partners—William and James Williams—decided to sell the team after four consecutive years of losses. Schott was able to buy the team for $13 million "as a Christmas present to the city," she told People.

A little more than six months after she became a general partner in the Reds, Schott was named president and chief executive officer of the Reds organization. She seemed to revel in the celebrity of being the owner of a major league ball club. Some of her favorite moments came when she paraded around the field before game time with "Schottzie," her pet St. Bernard, greeting her own players and those of the opposing team. And she did manage to turn the Reds around, basking in the glow of some of the team's more notable successes. These included Pete Rose's record-breaking 4,192nd hit on September 11, 1985; pitcher Tom Browning's perfect game on September 16, 1988; and the team's fifth world championship in 1990. In the process, she went through a total of five general managers and seven managers. One of the latter—Davey Johnson—was fired because he lived with his fiancée before marriage, while another—Ray Knight—was hired partly because Schott liked his wife, pro golfer Nancy Lopez.

A notorious penny-pincher, Schott closely monitored spending by the Reds organization, down to keeping track of the number of pens and pencils in the front office. She slashed spending for the Reds minor league farm system and said she hated spending for talent scouts because "all they do is watch games." Sadly, Schott's insensitive remarks largely overshadowed her positive contributions to the Reds. On February 3, 1993, Schott was fined $25,000 and banned from the day-to-day operations of the Reds for a year for usiing racial epithets.

Interviewed by ESPN in May 1996, Schott said she believed that Hitler "was good in the beginning but went too far," setting off a new round of controversy and again bringing down the wrath of Major League Baseball upon her head. On June 12, 1996, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig ordered that Schott relinquish control of the team through the end of the 1998 season. The suspension is later extended to include the 1999 season, during which time Schott negotiated the sale of the team to a investor group led by fellow Cincinnatian Carl H. Lindner, chairman and CEO of American Financial Group Inc. In October 1999, Schott received $67 million for her shares in the team.

A lifelong resident of Cincinnati, Schott lives there still. Although she retains some token holdings in the Cincinnati Reds, she has not been involved in the team's management since she was forced to sell her majority interest in 1999. But she will forever remain one of the biggest fans of her hometown baseball team, and she still has seats at the Reds' Cinergy Field, where she cheers on the Reds whenever she can. Since stepping down as the Reds' majority owner, Schott has been plagued by illness and injury. In 1999, she was hospitalized at Cincinnati's Jewish Hospital with a bout of seasonal allergy, and she was hospitalized several times during 2001 and 2002 with breathing problems. Schott remains active in civic affairs and has made a couple of sizeable contributions to Cincinnati's St. Ursula Academy. An animal lover, Schott again made news in early 2002 when she offered to make a home for a runaway cow at her 70-acre Indian Hill estate.

There can be no argument that Marge Schott and her business skills helped the Cincinnati Reds recover from one of their biggest slumps—in terms of both finances and morale—ever. In a statement released after the sale of the Reds was finalized, new owner Lindner said of Schott: "I've known her for a long time, including her many years as an owner of the Reds. She has always kept the fans first in her mind. For that, all of Cincinnati should thank her and join me in wishing her the very best." Unfortunately, much of the good Schott accomplished may eventually be forgotten in the shadow of some of the insensitive remarks attributed to her over the years.