There are few sports that American Jews love more than baseball. You can find someone wearing an MLB-themed yarmulke at any synagogue event or high holiday service.
It is something that is sort of unexplainable. Maybe Jews love baseball because there were so many Jews in New York during the so-called golden age of baseball, when the city was home to the Giants, Dodgers, and the Yankees. Or because when we immigrated to America, we wanted to fit in, and what was more American than baseball, the national pastime?
Growing up, I loved the Reds because my dad loved the Reds. He would extoll the values of “Charlie Hustle”(Pete Rose for the uninitiated) as he made my brother and I play pickle in the driveway (I would not suggest sliding on blacktop).
Reflecting on my childhood (and current) love of the Reds, I am always reminded that Marge Schott, the team’s then-owner, did not love me back because I was Jewish, and another reason I’ll get into later. (She didn’t love most people. She loved cigarettes, her dog, armbands, and being racist.)
Schott became infamous for being one of the most racist and antisemitic owners in contemporary MLB history. She was known for casually using racial slurs and gushing hateful comments at every ethnic group.
Even while being a vile human being, her teams in the early and mid-1990s were good. In 1990, the Reds won the World Series. However, Schott’s virulent antisemitism casted a shadow on the team’s accomplishments.
It was during the 1990s that Schott’s antisemitism was directed at my family. During the 1990s and early 2000s, my dad owned and operated a series of gift shops in Cincinnati, Louisville, and Lexington.
He sold licensed Reds products in a gift shop in the Hyatt hotel, also home to a separate Reds gift shop. Marge did not like this and went on an antisemitic tirade. The incident is documented in the book ‘Marge Schott: Unleashed’ by Mike Bass.
Schott was with the Hyatt GM, Sheldon Fox, overlooking the lobby, where a Reds Gift Shop was located. About 15 feet away was another shop (an STK store) also carrying Reds merchandise.
Schott was upset, and after complaining to Fox, it came up in the ensuing conversation that the shop’s owner, Gary Fisher, was Jewish like Fox was.’ Schott said, “It’s typical. All he wants is to chase a buck. They ought to send the son-of-a-bitch back to Israel with the rest of them.”
And that wasn’t even the worst antisemitic thing Schott ever said. Some of Schott’s greatest hits include when she said, “Hitler was good at the beginning, but then went too far.” She also admitted in an interview that she kept a swastika armband at home.
Did this stop my dad or me from being Reds fans? No. Thankfully, we weren’t hounded by Schott’s supporters in an age before social media. Most Reds fans chose to be ignorant of the true nature of the Reds’ owner because her team won games.
The monologue in the opening scene of Patton, when he says, “There’s nothing Americans love more than a winner,” explains some of the situation. As long as the Reds won games, Schott was more than tolerated by most Cincinnatians.
People lined up to get her autograph at games, while her dog Schotzie panted and, according to people at the time, stained Riverfront Stadium with urine.
Schott was eventually suspended from managing the team — after her Hitler comment. She became a pariah of the league and finally, in 1999, she was forced to sell the team.
It felt like I won. She was forced out of baseball, and I got to keep it and keep supporting the team, through its ups and downs over the past 26 years (let’s be honest — primarily downs).
The story of Schott saying she wanted to send my Dad “back to Israel with the rest of them” became a Fisher family legend, and a bit of a fun fact I would share with friends as a relic of antisemitism that was no longer a mainstream force in society.
Over the past few years, as antisemitism has skyrocketed in America and worldwide, it makes me wonder if Schott would’ve even been suspended for her racist and antisemitic comments had she been an owner today.
Would she have succumbed to the pressure of the Anti-Defamation League and accepted the suspension from the MLB?
Or would she have doubled down, and been championed by “anti-woke” influencers, and brought onto every podcast to spread her hate-filled comments to a wider audience.
She would fit in perfectly in today’s internet landscape, be known as a First Amendment warrior; and who knows, could even be the Secretary of Education.
I don’t know. I don’t have any answers. But I know this: the Reds have a shot at the World Series this year (okay, probably not, but I get to be an optimist on the first game of the season), and I’ll support them like always. I’ll wear my Hebrew Cincinnati Reds shirt this year and hope Schott turns in her grave.
Happy Opening Day.
