1940 Reds Premium- the biggest fan and NO wild women!!

[Leon]

Harry Thobe might have been the biggest Reds fan ever. Here is a premium of him and a short blog article about him. I guess from what we can tell he was born in either '69 or '70.....

730. March 27, 2002 -- Harry S. Thobe part of Reds and Miami traditions:

Journal-News , Wednesday, March 27, 2002
Harry S. Thobe colorful part of Reds and Miami traditions

By Jim Blount

Opening day, the start of the major league baseball season, is a sacred Cincinnati tradition and few personalities were part of the colorful event longer than Harry Thobe, an Oxford stonemason. The ardent Reds fan strutted and danced at Cincinnati ball parks for 56 years before he was buried in his familiar red-trimmed white suit with a red tie bearing the Reds logo.

He also wore the suit at Miami University games, and claimed to be the No. 1 fan of the Redskins, the nickname for the school’s athletic teams when Thobe entertained on the sidelines. His colorful attire also contributed to his reputation as a crafty gate crasher. It enabled him, Thobe claimed, to gain admission without paying to 20 World Series games, eight Rose Bowls, three Orange Bowls, a Sun Bowl, championship boxing matches and numerous other events.

He worked at his trade and traveled the nation backing the Reds and Redskins -- and fooling gate attendants -- until he was 80 years old.

Thobe -- pronounced Toe-Bee -- was born Feb. 11, 1870, in Evansville, Ind., and grew up in Covington, Ky., before moving to Oxford in the early 1890s to lay bricks for a new Oxford railroad station and Herron Gymnasium on the Miami campus.

It’s uncertain when he started wearing the distinctive white suit and white straw hat and carrying an umbrella and red and white megaphone to Reds and Redskins games. Circumstantial evidence would indicate that it was before 1930.

He wasn’t a fan in the stands. He performed on the sidelines before and during games. Besides dancing, Thobe proclaimed to the fans that " I had a dream last night." The vision always revealed that his favorite team would win the game about to be played.

Not everyone appreciated Thobe’s act, according to Walter Havighurst, author of The Miami Years. Havighurst recalled a description written by Ralph McGinnis, Miami alumni editor in the 1930s. "Misled, misunderstood, goofy, or loyal, whatever he might be, Thobe loves Miami in his own particular way and has given a great deal of energy, some money, and the best years of his life unselfishly to her. His methods may have lacked dignity, but never sincerity," McGinnis wrote.

McGinnis also recounted a football game routine involving Thobe and a Miami dean, which, he said, "was worth the price of admission." The dean would attempt to chase Thobe off the field. The dean, "fully conscious of the dignity of his position demanded, and Thobe with no dignity at all, but an unlimited zeal for the home team, curving around the track in front of the east stands was a sight few can forget."

His unusual dress and his antics saved him lots of money. "I just march in with the band -- any band," he explained in a 1948 interview. "The men who throw the gates wide open for the band usually think Thobe, in his clownish attire, is part of the act," noted the interviewer. "Baseball players, umpires and newspapermen often escort Thobe through the press gxate if there is no band present for the occasion."

Thobe said he attended every Reds opener after 1894. He died in a Hamilton hospital March 30, 1950, just 20 days before the Reds lost the 1950 opener to the Cubs at Crosley Field.

A Thobe legacy on the Miami campus was a fountain he built and maintained. It was replaced by a smaller fountain in 1952. The troublesome second fountain was removed in 1959 and replaced by a plaque and a monument. An Oxford legend contends that Harry Thobe’s ghost still dances around the former site of the fountain.

Perhaps a Journal-News editorial writer knew something in 1950 when he wrote that "the memory of his [Thobe’s] familiar dancing figure, in costume, and the memory of his friendliness and enthusiasm will linger long in the minds of thousands of people."

[Jay Wolt]

That's pretty interesting and very cool the Reds had a premium made of a die-hard fan

[rc4157]

That's a pretty distinctive piece Leon. Hmmm..... I'm a Reds fan, graduated from Miami University in Oxford..... and though some may think different, I don't believe I'm eccentric enough to garner my own card!!

RC