Schott Is Alone on Top of the National League : Baseball: Everybody says the Reds’ owner is tough. If so, who was that crying on the way home after beating the Pirates?

She owned the contracts of the players jumping and hugging on the infield. She owned the fireworks exploding above center field.

She owned each ball that was thrown into the stands, each base that was danced upon, each cap that was tossed high in jubilation.

Yet late Friday, while her Cincinnati Reds celebrated winning the National League championship series, Marge Schott was alone.

After the Reds made the final out in the playoffs-clinching victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates at Riverfront Stadium, the owner of the Reds called for a guard. He escorted her from her front-row seat to the field with her constant companion, the St. Bernard named Schottzie.

She left the dog and walked tentatively down the first-base line toward the players’ celebration. When she reached first base, she waited and watched.

The players began running off the field in her direction, some passing within inches of her. But most of them just kept running. Most never even looked.

She finally coerced a hug from Danny Jackson and another from Rob Dibble and several more from coaches.

Then she turned and the team was gone. And she didn’t know where to go.

“I didn’t know what was happening next,” she recalled. “I just wish somebody would have told me.”

She was informed that inside the Reds’ clubhouse, the championship trophy was being presented. She figured it is always presented to the owner, so she walked quickly inside.

But she was too late. As she stepped into the clubhouse for only the third time in her six years as owner, she saw the trophy being handed to Manager Lou Piniella.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “My team, and who is the only one not there? Mrs. Schott.”

Shortly thereafter she posed for photographers with Piniella and the trophy. But it wasn’t the same.

At 3 a.m. Saturday, driving to the farm where she lives with Schottzie, Marge Schott did something she never lets anyone see her do.

She cried.

“When I’m alone, that sometimes happens,” she said. “Everybody says I’m so tough. Sometimes I’m not so tough.”

Typically, it is only that toughness that shows. And it is that toughness that will make Schott, 62, one of the most watched people beginning Tuesday when her Reds play host to the Oakland Athletics in the World Series.

“She is one of the world’s truly unusual people,” said first baseman Todd Benzinger. “But I mean that in a good way.”

She will certainly be one of the easiest to spot. She is one of baseball’s few owners who sits in the stands, in an unguarded box seat next to her team’s dugout.

She will be the one who is chain smoking, talking on a phone, cheering for the highly paid men she calls “her boys” and signing autographs.

“Although if you want to know the truth, Schottzie receives more requests for her paw print than I do for my autograph,” she said in an interview in her stadium office Sunday. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

Since Schott took control of the team in 1985, the dog has become more than a team mascot. She has become a symbol of her owner--sometimes charming, sometimes intimidating and almost always appearing out of place.

“We don’t mind Marge. We keep her upstairs, and she generally stays out of our business,” outfielder Herm Winningham said. “But I don’t go near that dog.”

The players were not happy that Schottzie was part of their 1990 team picture, although Schott has a photo showing the 1896 Cincinnati baseball club with a St. Bernard mascot.

And she has blown up part of this year’s photo to make another point.

“If you look close, you can see that Schottzie’s expression is the same as Lou’s (Piniella) expression,” she said, “I mean, they look the same.”

Schott says Schottzie watches the games from a couch in her office, from where the view extends only to home plate.

“But she still gives Lou (Piniella) signs from here,” Schott said.

The office contains photographs of dogs that Schott claims are Schottzie’s “boyfriends.” Her preferential treatment of Schottzie, though, is harmless except when Schottzie strays from that office.

During the Reds’ on-field celebration after clinching the West Division championship, Schottzie relieved herself next to the San Diego Padres’ dugout.

Several years ago, in a private box, Schottzie relieved herself next to then-commissioner Peter Ueberroth’s shoes.

“I remember the commissioner yelling, ‘My God, what is this dog doing?’ ” Schott recalled. “I told him, ‘Come on, Peter, everybody has a dog.’

“And that’s the point of Schottzie. Many people in America have pets, and that’s what I’m trying to do--keep Americana in baseball.”

During the playoffs, she suggested that her players wear “Schottzie” caps--a baseball cap with floppy ears--before the first World Series game.

The players rebelled and, after much criticism, she has changed her mind.

“Now I think it will be fine if they just wear them during the first World Series workout,” she said.

And then there is the idea that Schottzie’s dog hair brings good luck. It was started by Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda, who jokingly rubbed some of the hair on his chest before the Dodgers defeated the Reds earlier this year.

Now Schott insists that Piniella rub some of Schottzie’s hair on his chest before every game.

“It’s just a little bag of hair,” she said. “And it seems to work.”

When it comes to her ideas about Schottzie, sometimes it is difficult to tell when Schott is serious. But when it comes to her business approach, there is no question.

When she wants a stadium elevator, she kicks at the door. Small dents can be seen on each floor.

When the elevator arrives, she demands that the operator go to her destination first, no matter where the other passengers are headed.

“I’m just impatient,” she said. “And I’m very hands-on. Maybe that is my problem. Maybe I shouldn’t get so involved.”

She despises waste. Last winter she attempted to return several boxes of unused doughnuts after a breakfast reception. When the bakery would not accept them, she tried to sell them to her employees.

When a local writer later accused her of running the Reds like she runs her local used car dealerships, she banned him from the press box cafeteria.

The Reds still travel on more commercial flights than most teams. And wives can travel only one way on such flights. And children are not allowed. And one team and media bus, not the usual two, is reserved in each city.

“I will spend whatever money it takes to win,” she said. “But I will not throw money away. What is so wrong with that?”

She was recently called “cheap,” by Pittsburgh catcher Mike LaValliere for seating the Pirates wives in the upper deck during the playoffs. But those are the sorts of seats she will offer to most members of the Reds’ families during the World Series.

She says it is just business.

“I’ve got my prime season ticket holders to worry about, the ones who come to every game, and I don’t think it’s fair to have to move them out for other people,” she said. “I am doing all I can--nobody feels for the wives like I do--but I have to take care of my customers.

“They can call me cheap, that’s fine. If my employees don’t like it, they can leave. But I don’t know what else to do.”

But she has another side, the side she says “can only be seen in a woman owner.”

She calls all of her players “sweetie.” She hugs them whenever they will stand still for her.

The only thing that gets her as excited as a home run is when a player’s wife gives birth.

“That’s what so great about this year--look at all of our babies,” she said. “We are producing on and off the field.”

She insists that her players be clean shaven, but only because she thinks men look nice like that.

“I notice that look, and I like that look and there’s nothing better than to see my boys walk into a hotel looking so special,” she said.

When a player criticizes her, like Rob Dibble did during the playoffs while demanding a better contract, she shrugs.

“Oh, little baby Dibble,” she said. “Sometimes I just have to slap his little wrist.”

She often phones Piniella, but never to change a lineup or even criticize.

“Instead of chewing me out, she always called to give me praise and support,” said Piniella, who as New York Yankee manager used to have to field critical calls from George Steinbrenner.

And Marge Schott, of all people, has not forgotten Pete Rose.

She said she sends messages to her former manager at the minimum-security prison in Marion, Ill., where Rose is serving time for tax evasion.

“Yes, I care about him. The problems were never between me and him,” she said. “We really had a good thing going here. The Pete and Marge show. I wish he could be here, I really do.”

She paused and cleared her throat.

“It has been a really long, hard time for me since I took over this club,” she said. “When I first got here, only the elevator operator would talk to me. Nobody could believe that a woman could run this team.

“Maybe people still don’t believe it. Maybe it will always be like this. I can’t care about that.”

She paused again. “I just can’t.”