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Where Is
Marge Schott When We Need Her? She may have been and idiot, but when you are in a small market town with one of the richest histories in baseball, would you rather have a owner with passion about her team that tends to constantly brain fart or a corporate type that only worries about the bottom line? Hmmm... I will take the dog poop on the field instead of what the Banana King is force feeding me anyday. I had the oppurtunity to meet her once. It was at the Concourse D' Elegance in Cincinnati, Ohio. For those of you unfamiliar, it is a car show for high end all stock classic cars. She stopped to admire my stepfathers car, talked with us briefly, and seemed pleasent enough. I even played with Schotzie (I think it was 1). Just about the time he took a dump in front of our $75,000.00 car she turned and walked off as if it never happened. What are you going to say? Marge loved Reds Baseball. She loved her dog. She loved Jim Bowden. My guess is that she hated everything else around her including herself. All of us living in a small market town in this new age of baseball would gladly take her passion when it came to her ball team. She didn't sit in an Owner's Box. She sat in the front row nightly. What kind of ball team did we have before her? Who could forget stars like Paul Householder and Dann Billardello? We stunk! Her first business was to bring back tradition. Who better than Pete Rose (which by the way we ran out of town, along with the rest of the Big Red Machine) to do that? So he wasn't a great manager. Heck, we were not a good team so what could it hurt? What it did do was bring fans back to somber Riverfront Staduim. We started to look better though. Instead of last, we finished 2nd in our division. We started to look better and better. Of course, we can't forget the Rose incidient which was truely a blessing in disguise or we would have never gotten Sweet Lou. So the managers hated her. So did the GM's. WHO CARES, WE JUST SWEPT THE BEST TEAM IN BASEBALL TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES! Did we have the best team in baseball? NO! Now we have the Bowden Era. The hardest working young GM in baseball. Always looking for the big deal and the diamond in the rough. Yeah, by this time Marge has killed our minor league system, our scouts are terrible, but are we competitive on the major league level year in and year out? YES! Let's ask the Cubs or Red Sox what there minor league systems have done for them that past 100 or so years. I bet they would trade all those great players they developed for one World Series title. Marge overspent and lost money every year she owned the team. Did she complain? I never heard her ask for anything back from the city. She felt that it was our birth right to have a good team on the field. Did she allow Bowden to go out and get players to help us try and win? Well, only if we were fighting for the pennant, which by the way was most of the 90's. Did we win again? No, but did we fell good about our ball team? Yes! Bowden even fought off the lure of the Yankees to stay in this small market city. We owe more to Jim Bowden, and Carl Linder owes more to the city of Cincinnati. We agreed to build the Great Americain Ball Park for Marge and Jim's Reds. Carl Linder owns Chiquita Bannana, Linder's Bagels, and a slue of other money making businesses. Do those companies put sub par porducts on the shelves of your local supermarkets? If they did would they still be in business? These are the questions I have, along with why did we trade Boone and Guillen instead of Larkin? They both made less combined and had triple the production! Give me the crazy lady and the dog anyday! Scott Salley is a disgruntled Reds fan from Middletown, Ohio, and is a member of a fantasy baseball league with the editor-in-chief. While his views may not reflect the views of the overly Yankee-biased editorial staff at Buhner.com, we understand where he's coming from. We also think he'll like Brandon Claussen, once he gets to know him. Copyright 2003 © Buhner.com All Rights reserved. |