Nightengale: Discipline the owner? It's not easy

Marge Schott was ultimately forced to sell her share of the Cincinnati Reds to other owners. / Tom Uhlman, Associated Press

The humiliation. The public shame. The disgrace. The national embarrassment.

Yep, Major League Baseball has felt the NBA's pain.

Baseball had its Donald Sterling.

Her name was Marge Schott, owner of the Cincinnati Reds.

Baseball had its lifetime suspension.

His name was George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees.

Baseball had the public contempt and outrage.

His name was Al Campanis, general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Eighteen years after Schott was forced to surrender control of the Reds, 24 years after Steinbrenner received a lifetime suspension, and 27 years after Campanis was fired, the NBA now has the country enraged.

We will learn this afternoon just how the NBA will punish Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, but the baseball executives directly responsible for disciplining Schott and Steinbrenner insist it won't be as simple as many desire.

'It's a very tricky political problem,'' former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent told USA TODAY Sports, 'as well as a legal problem. These actions are not criminal. Nobody committed a felony. There were statements that were abhorrent, very silly or stupid. Marge Schott did some very strange things and said some remarkably silly things too, but certainly, they weren't criminal.

'In the business environment, it's important to determine if any laws were broken. In this case, noting was illegal, so you can't require him to sell the business.

'It's a challenging and difficult set of problems for a commissioner. You run the risk of litigatio. Just like Steinbrenner, when you have an owner that really gets himself into a mess, you can't require him to sell.'

The quandary, of course, is the commissioner's power. A commissioner is hired by owners, but once hired, is required to discipline the people who hired him.

'It's a strange anomaly,'' Vincent says. 'This guy [Sterling] is one of the owners who has employed the commissioner, but at the time, you're responsible for disciplinary action against these owners. You get yourself in a very tricky environment. It's very, very difficult to maneuver.''

If the NBA wants Sterling out, Vincent says, the power must come from his fellow owners.

'If I were to guess,'' Vincent says, 'the owners will push him to sell the team. He may not want to do it very quickly. But I think he will have to leave basketball one way or the other.''

Steinbrenner, who originally agreed to a lifetime ban in 1990, changed his mind and wanted back in baseball a year later. He was charged with a felony for making illegal campaign contributions for President Richard Nixon in 1974, and in 1990 paid a gambler to dig up dirt on Yankee outfielder Dave Winfield. His suspension ultimately lasted two years.

'It was the fair and right thing to do,'' Vincent said. 'That was the right discipline. Bargaining himself for a lifetime sentence never made any sense.'

His transgressions were egregious, but certainly not as hateful and offensive as those committed by Schott and Campanis. Campanis was forced to resign after protests flooded the Dodgers' office for his racial insensitive remarks on ABC's Nightline in 1987, saying on the 40th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, that African-Americans 'may not have some of the necessities to be a field manager, or, perhaps, a general manager.''

Schott, the general partner of the Reds, had a history of lewd comments throughout the years, degrading African-Americans, Asians, Jews, and gays. This wasn't done in the privacy of her home, but openly with the media and her employees.

She used a sickening racial slur describing outfielders Eric Davis and Dave Parker. She kept a Nazi swastika armband at her home. She made a public comment that 'Adolf Hitler was good in the beginning, but went too far.'' She said in a speech players were prohibited from wearing earrings because 'only fruits wear earrings.''

And Schott said in a magazine article that she didn't like Asian-American kids 'outdoing our kids'' in high school.''

Major League Baseball couldn't force her to sell her stake in the team, former National League president Leonard Coleman said, but the Commissioner's office did everything in its power to get her out of baseball.

'There were other insensitivities where I felt a suspension was in order,'' said Coleman, who served his post at a time league presidencies were positions of influence, 'so we finally negotiated an agreement where she was suspended.''

Schott, who was originally suspended in 1993, stepped down in 1996 when faced with another suspension, and sold her shares of the team three years later, believing the Reds' limited partners were soon going to force her out.

Schott may never have understood that anything was wrong in her beliefs, but money has a funny way of prompting action.

'It was very difficult to get Marge over the hurdle of sensitivity,'' Coleman told USA TODAY Sports. 'Both Commissioner [Bud] Selig and myself attempted to do that, but it's something we obviously didn't meet with great success.

'I don't believe we ever achieved it.''

It may be no different than Sterling, who perhaps may wonder just what he did wrong. His voice is believed to be on a secret tape recording telling his girlfriend, in part, that his viewpoints are a byproduct of the culture in which he lives.

'If the allegations are proven,'' said Coleman, co-chairman of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, 'then I'm sure Commissioner Adam Silver will come down with the appropriate hammer.

'It's extremely sad in 2014 that a sports owner can hold those type of views.

'I think the Clippers are irreparably damaged.''

A different sport. A different era.

Some beliefs, no matter how outrageous and atrocious, will never change.

Read the original story: Nightengale: Discipline the owner? It's not easy

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