Baseball to Bar Schott for Year, an Owner Says

Baseball’s ruling Executive Council has decided to suspend Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott for one year, a major league owner told The Times on Sunday night. An announcement is expected in Chicago on Wednesday.

The decision, which also may include a fine of up to $250,000, culminates an inquiry by the council into alleged and acknowledged racial and ethnic remarks by the managing partner of the National League team.

Neither Schott nor Milwaukee Brewers President Bud Selig, chairman of the Executive Council, which governs baseball in the absence of a commissioner, could be reached late Sunday. However, an American League team owner said the penalty has been made final.

The Major League Agreement, which provides the rules and protocol by which baseball operates, allows the council to react with a suspension and/or fine if it believes “the best interests of baseball” have been damaged.

It also stipulates that an owner cannot sue the commissioner, or in this case, the council acting as the commissioner, although Schott is expected to fight the suspension through her attorney, Robert Bennett of Washington.

Bennett, in responding to the findings of the council during a Jan. 22 meeting in Texas, said it had no authority to act against Schott.

“Any restriction of Mrs. Schott’s management authority or ownership rights, including her right of access to Riverfront Stadium (where the Reds play), not only would be misguided and grossly unjust, but also would be illegal and judicially unenforceable,” Bennett said after that meeting.

Responding the same day to the report by the four-person investigating committee of the Executive Council, Schott said: “As a woman in this male-dominated fraternity, I have never been fully accepted as an equal. Now, once again, I feel as though I’m being discriminated against.”

She told the council at that meeting that racial and insensitive ethnic remarks were common when she was growing up and that “perhaps subconsciously I may even have thought that these words made me sound tough, aggressive or masculine to my male competitors in the business world.”

While much of the focus of the charges has been on comments Schott has made employing the word “nigger,” sources familiar with the investigating committee’s report say it contains a greater amount of evidence concerning insensitive ethnic remarks rather than those of a racial nature.