They are the members of the U.S. Senate Antitrust Subcommittee. Later this week they’ll hold hearings on whether to strip major-league baseball of its exemption from federal antitrust laws. That special status has existed since 1922, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled baseball was merely an “amusement” rather than a business. It’s a 70-year winning streak that club owners dread coming to an end: without antitrust immunity, they would have to stop behaving like a monopoly free to block team relocation, league expansion and television competition from nonlocal teams.
Owners have never been the cleanest or brightest of the business community. From the Black Sox era of Charles Comiskey to the clowning of Charlie Finley, the overlords of baseball have often seemed intent on ruining their sport. The national pastime endures in spite of them. But not until this autumn has it appeared possible that Congress might actually get fed up. Whom can the owners thank most for their legislative nightmare? Their own Marge Schott-owner of the Cincinnati Reds and a St. Bernard mascot named Schottzie 02 who slobbers at the mouth as much as its master.
The 63-year-old Schott stands accused by former employees of making derogatory racial and ethnic remarks. Among the alleged slurs: “million-dollar niggers,” “money-grubbing Jews,” “Jap” and “Hitler was good in the beginning, but went too far”; the racial remark was about former Reds outfielders Dave Parker and Eric Davis. Parker called Schott “a blatant racist” and is considering suing for defamation. Schott is also said to keep a Nazi swastika armband in her home. (“It’s no big deal,” she was quoted in The New York Times. “I keep it in a drawer with Christmas decorations.”) In different and sometimes conflicting statements, Schott has denied making some of the comments and acknowledged others as “joke terms.” Last week, in both the baseball and civil-rights communities, there were calls for her ouster or at least to put her on a short leash. Baseball’s executive council of owners is investigating and is expected to report soon.
The furor over Schott will only intensify in this week’s congressional scrutiny. Subcommittee chairman Sen. Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio says Schott’s alleged remarks will come up at the hearings. Outrageous as they are, they wouldn’t seem a fitting subject for the arcana of antitrust regulation, but baseball owners face more than a strictly economic evaluation of their ways. Their lordly treatment was always tied to the notion that baseball was unlike other industries. Rock-star salaries, autograph bounties and labor strife have helped erode that myth. “The assumption in Congress,” former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent told NEWSWEEK, “Was always that the best interests of baseball would be looked after by an independent commissioner. Now, with the Schott situation, senators will ask if the owners are out of control.”
On occasion, Congress has yabbered about rescinding the exemption, particularly when some committee chairman pined for a diamond in his district. Yet baseball always seemed to escape-by occasional expansion and, more important, by having a commissioner who theoretically was the guardian of the game. That all changed in September when the owners dumped Vincent for the crime of repeatedly disagreeing with them. Gone was any pretense that the owners ran baseball for anything other than economic reasons; such, of course, is the American way of business but also the reason Congress invented antitrust law. Vincent may get the last laugh: he’ll be the first witness and will tell senators that they should consider eliminating the exemption if the owners don’t restore the powers of his old office.
The committee will also get to hear the complaints of Floridians infuriated that the owners last month vetoed the move of the San Francisco Giants to Tampa. Both Sunshine senators, Bob Graham and Connie Mack (grandson namesake of the legendary Philadelphia owner-manager), will participate in the hearings. They know what a potent weapon that antitrust law could be. If no exemption existed, Tampa would have the Giants-or the jilted ownership group could be sitting on a fat damage award from a court. The head of the baseball players’ union, Don Fehr, will be testifying before the committee as well. The union has long opposed the antitrust exemption, and Fehr may be especially feisty since his members face a management lockout next spring training; owners have until this Friday to decide whether to reopen the collective-bargaining agreement and thus set the stage for a labor war.
Because most baseball owners are used to getting their own way, any attempt to change their privileged status will be met with Billy Martin-like ferocity. “It will be next to impossible,” acknowledges Graham. If the senators really wanted to apply the political screws, they could skip antitrust laws and move straight to the tax code: those lucrative depreciation rules make owning a ball club an accountant’s fantasyland. Now that would be leverage.
