Red Menace

Because even baseball needs villains.

Don’t let the old lady act fool you. She would feed you to her dog without a second thought! (Photo by Focus on Sport/Getty Images)

The world is full of assholes. Apologies for the language. We can call them a-holes, if you like. Or better yet, maybe we’ll go with jerks. It doesn’t really matter what you call them. They’re inescapable.

Their presence can feel overwhelming sometimes, especially in the present day. Nowadays, it seems like there are more jerks than ever, though I doubt that’s the case. They just have a megaphone now with the internet and social media amplifying their voices. But they’ve always been here. That’s a fact.

And baseball is no more immune to them than any other walk of life. In fact, if you think back to the ratio of jerks among the jocks in your high school, you could probably even make a case that pro sports are especially susceptible to them. They might even be a breeding ground for jerks. Because one hard and fast rule of pro sports is the better you play, the more you can get away with.

We don’t have time to list all the jerks who’ve played baseball, so let’s hit a few highlights.

Albert Belle, who was flat-out awesome at his peak in Cleveland, once hopped in his SUV and tried to run down some trick-or-treaters who egged his house. Perhaps an overreaction. But if you asked Fernando Vina, he’d probably tell you that Belle didn’t need a vehicle to truck anyone.

Dave Kingman was a notorious jerk to everybody, but seemed to take real pleasure in antagonizing autograph-seeking kids. Jeez, what’s up with all these players targeting kids?

Jeff Kent called out Vin Scully for criticizing his play. Vin Scully! That’s like attacking… I can’t even come up with a name, because who the hell compares to Vin Scully?

Of course, jerkiness can be extremely subjective. Jerks who wear your team’s uniform sometimes get a pass. Take what former White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen once said about his catcher, A.J. Pierzynski: “If you’re playing against him, you hate him. If he’s on your team, you hate him a little less.” That probably sums up Ozzie too.

More often than not, jerks are pretty straightforward. Like Roger Clemens, one of the greatest pitchers of all-time. Not only did he once throw a broken bat at Mike Piazza during the 2000 World Series and later claim he thought he was throwing a ball— which, even if you’re willing to buy that obvious lie, is it that much better?— he’s also steadfastly refused to admit to taking PEDs, even after longtime friend and teammate, Andy Pettitte, pretty convincingly rolled over on him in court.

And don’t even get me started on Lenny Dykstra.

But I think there’s one baseball jerk that might be worse than all of them (or at least Dykstra’s equal), and has little redeeming charm. I’m not talking about a player either. Hell, I’m not even talking about a dude. I’m talking about former Cincinnati Reds owner, Marge Schott.

In the late 80’s and most of the 90’s, Marge Schott was frequently featured on magazine covers and newspaper headlines for all the wrong reasons. With her beloved dog Schottzie, who she let have the run of Riverfront Stadium, regularly stinking up the locker rooms and players’ uniforms, she had the appearance of a likeable enough old grandmother, but it was just one scandal after another.

Here’s a brief rundown of her lowlights.

In 1992, an employee testified that she referred to Eric Davis and Dave Parker (both tremendous ballplayers I’ve written about before) as “million-dollar n*gg*rs.” She never denied saying it, only suggested that she’d been joking.

She kept a Nazi armband at home that she claimed was given to her as a gift, and then was quoted as saying that “Hitler was good for Germany at first.” That comment got her banned from day-to-day baseball operations by MLB in 1998. A year later, facing another suspension and poor health, she sold her controlling stake in the Reds. But I’m getting ahead of myself. There was plenty more before that.

She couldn’t understand why the term “Jap” was offensive. I feel a little skeezy just typing a lot of this stuff, but she doubled down by doing an over the top racist impersonation of a Japanese person while describing a meeting with the Prime Minister of Japan.

In 1994, she tried to prevent Reds players from wearing earrings because, she said in a statement, “only fruits wear earrings.” What a sweetheart. It’s amazing the seats at Riverfront were never filled with mobs brandishing torches and pitchforks.

Perhaps her coldest moment came on Opening Day 1996. Umpire John McSherry collapsed shortly after the start of the game and died, causing a postponement. Rather than acknowledge that a man had died, she threw a fit over the delay. “I feel cheated,” she said, angry that the tradition of Cincinnati hosting the first game of the year had been interrupted. Then she re-gifted some old flowers and sent them to the funeral home.

Those are probably her most egregious moments, but there were plenty of other lesser incidents that should have been red flags to anyone paying attention.

Notoriously cheap, she cut back on scouting to save money. I guess it was her money, but probably not the best way to run a baseball team. She also initially refused to run scores for other MLB games on the Reds’ scoreboard because it cost $350 a month. Just keep in mind, that even in the mid-90’s, that’s pocket change for an MLB team and owner.

It wasn’t just earrings she had a problem with either. She prohibited facial hair on her players, and in 1985, she offered legendary pitcher Rollie Fingers a contract, but only if he shaved his iconic mustache. Fingers refused and retired instead, saying he would only shave if she shaved her dog too. I mean, what kind of red-blooded American would ever ask Rollie Fingers to shave?

But here’s the kicker for me. Late in the 1989 season, during a one-sided loss to the Padres, legendary Reds announcer Marty Brenneman (whose son and successor, Thom, would have his own brush with scandal many years later) invited Randy “The Macho Man” Savage to join him in the booth.

If you don’t want this man around, I don’t think I want to be around you. (Photo Credit: Getty Images/George Napolitano)

If you’re unfamiliar with the “Macho Man,” what have you been doing with your life? He was one of the biggest names in pro wrestling in the over-the-top days of the 80’s and 90’s. Randy Poffo (his real name) embodied everything that is ridiculous about pro wrestling in all the best ways. But what a lot of people don’t know is that before he was the Macho Man, he was actually a catching prospect in both the Cardinals’ and Reds’ minor league systems.

So, in addition to providing a fun diversion during an otherwise dull game, it made perfect sense for him to be there. At least it made perfect sense to everybody else. Not to Marge. She had the Macho Man ejected from the booth during the game, furious that he’d ever been invited.

This drew the ire of Brenneman, Eric Davis and other players, the fans, and presumably the Macho Man, though as far as I know, he let it go without further incident, even if she deserved an atomic elbow drop.

And if this article has taught you nothing else, no one in baseball history has ever been more deserving of an atomic elbow drop than Marge Schott.

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Thanks for reading Powder Blue Nostalgia. If you have a bigger jerk than Marge Schott in mind, let’s hear it in the comments. Or just share your thoughts on Marge. And if you’re actually a Marge Schott fan, I definitely want to hear you make your case.