Reds’ Owner Schott Has an Idea for Keeping Mario Soto on a Leash

Marge Schott, owner of the Cincinnati Reds, says she has offered the services of her St. Bernard dog, Schottzie, as protection for the Reds’ star pitcher, Mario Soto.

Soto, who is known for a volatile temper after several scraps on and off the field during the past two years, was cleared by an Atlanta judge last week of a charge of simple battery. Soto was charged as the result of a fight in April with a waiter at a discotheque in Atlanta, where Soto and other Red players had gone after a game with the Atlanta Braves.

The judge who dropped the charge against Soto concluded that the fight was a mutual confrontation.

Schott, in a speech Sunday to Ohio newspaper editors attending the annual meeting of the Associated Press Society of Ohio, said, “Who’s our pitcher who likes to go to restaurants--Soto? I told him, ‘The next time you go to a restaurant, you take Schottzie.’

“He says, ‘To bite the man on the leg?’ I said, ‘No, to bite you on the leg,