She Had to Play by Rules of Game

This is not about free speech. It never was.

Quit confusing the issue with Constitutional amendments or the law. This is about a corporation, Major League Baseball, that plays by its own rules. It does not abide by standard antitrust legislation, and it metes out disciplinary or monetary punishment as arbitrarily as a Roman senate or a Western posse.

In this century, American baseball is like the U.S. Marines. It has its own code of conduct. It extracts assurances from applicants that its edicts will be obeyed and that its verdicts will be final.

Al Campanis never broke any law. But he was sentenced by baseball. George Steinbrenner outraged, yet rarely enraged, the general public. Twice, nonetheless, he ran afoul of baseball. Pete Rose would not be the first ex-convict restored to society and reinstated by the game. But an outcast he remains, baseball’s leper.

And Marge Schott?

It is shameful--no, more like shameless--and pathetically desperate for the head Red or her attorneys to suggest that Schott is being persecuted because she is a woman in a man’s field, and few truly objective women will swallow this premise. Did ventriloquists work Schott’s mouth? What gender is Campanis? Did the men who run CBS-TV overlook Jimmy (the Greek) Snyder’s similar transgressions? That employee of the Oakland Athletics who attested to Schott’s unpleasantries--what sex was she?

Men never vetoed Joan Kroc’s ownership of the San Diego Padres, or Jean Yawkey’s of the Boston Red Sox or Joan Payson’s of the New York Mets. Were any male owner to declare that women lack the “necessities” to own a baseball club, he would be boycotted and vilified--if not by Jesse Jackson, then by Gloria Steinem or by California’s senators or by Schott herself.

The subject before us today is racism, not sexism. One must not perceive any action taken against the Cincinnati Reds’ owner as being in contempt of her rights as a U.S. citizen to speak freely in private or public.

No, what she did was demonstrate an impropriety that her colleagues were in no position to excuse or ignore. Once brought to its attention, the corporation not only was empowered to take action against her, but felt a powerful obligation to do so. To say naughty-naughty to Marge Schott and then let it slide would have been an unforgivable affront to all those her sentiments offended.

Schott wants to be treated as an equal? Let her then take her medicine as an equal.

Baseball is a business in which justice is dispensed with little regard for legal precedent. A profanity could cost $500 or $5,000; a punch, five to 50 days without pay. There is no Oliver Wendell Holmes ruling to be consulted to determine what judgment must be passed down to anyone who kicks dust onto the pants cuffs of an umpire or gets caught with a smidgen of Vaseline on his pitcher’s glove.

Many have wondered: “Why can’t Marge Schott or anyone else say whatever they please in a private conversation?”

Here is an answer: Consider for a moment your heritage. Consider your nationality, the birthplace of your ancestors, your gender, your skin color, your height and weight, everything about yourself. Now you hear of a business, maybe even your own company, run by someone who is heard, or even overheard, insulting or ridiculing your kind.

Would you not want this someone revealed for what he or she is? Or at least confronted?

Jesse Jackson, who has done much good, had nothing short of a mini-scandal of his own when one word he allegedly uttered, years ago, “Hymietown,” was construed as evidence of his true hidden nature. Yet while the Rev. Jackson at times must answer to a congregation or a constituency, he did not, as Marge Schott did, agree to comply with the decisions of a single corporation’s hierarchy that can banish a powerful owner or executive as routinely as it can a powerless shortstop.

Marge Schott is accountable. Already everything that has happened has opened her eyes to a situation she did not wish to acknowledge. Having owned a firm for several years, only of late has Schott dedicated herself to minority hiring. With luck, other similar businesses, yours and mine included, will get the hint.

Acting baseball commissioner Bud Selig, in announcing Schott’s one-year suspension Wednesday in Chicago, stipulated that her comments indicated “an insensitivity that cannot be tolerated by anyone in baseball” and went on to say that “the type of language commonly used by Mrs. Schott is offensive and unacceptable.”

You cannot wash out someone’s mind with soap. What you can do is sit them down and make them think. Why Marge Schott must pay $25,000 for her sins is a mystery, because how can anyone put a dollar-figure on insensitivity? But baseball did act firmly and wisely in doing to Marge Schott what this game has done before to so many.

It benched her.

Schott’s Status

Some details in the agreement that lawyers for Cincinnati Red owner Marge Schott said Wednesday they will sign with lawyers for major league baseball.

SCHOTT CAN . . . * Remain as managing general partner, retain her ownership interest, continue to earn revenue and be involved in major policy decisions. * Sit in the executive suite at Riverfront Stadium. * Designate a person to run the team, subject to approval from the executive council. Her lawyer said she will designate general manager Jim Bowden. * Be reinstated on Nov. 1 if she complies with all terms in Wednesday’s decision and the order of implementation that will be issued by March 1. Among the terms is that she attend a multicultural training program to be conducted by an organization acceptable to the executive council.

SCHOTT CAN’T . . . * Be involved in day-to-day operations of the team. * Sit in the owners’ on-field box.

* SCHOTT SUSPENDED: Baseball suspended Marge Schott for one year and fined her $25,000. A1