Irv Bollinger, the Enquirer's
Fan of the Century

BY JOHN ERARDI
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Irv Bollinger has seen almost all of the Reds stars from this century. (Michael Keating | ZOOM)

Irv Bollinger smacks his fist into the middle of a molasses-brown baseball glove, a glove worn by former Reds third baseman Heinie Groh, one of the players in the 1919 World Series.

''I'd like to get outside and catch a few balls in this,'' Bollinger says, his eyes focused on the glove being worn on his left hand curled up just slightly in front of his chest.

He smacks his fist into the glove again. Whap!

The smack echoes off the walls of Bollinger's living room of his home on Ada Street in Fairview, just adjacent to Clifton Heights. Irv, 88, has never lived anywhere else but in this home.

He has seen, in one form or another, almost every Reds player of significance who has suited up in the 20th century.

For this, and his involvement in youth baseball -- at one time in the 1950s he was running 19 Knothole teams -- The Enquirer named Irv "Fan of the Century."

''The first game I went to was at Redland Field in 1919, and there was an old-timers' game before it,'' he says.

Nowadays, when one tries to talk to somebody about the great Reds center fielder, Eddie Roush (1916 to 1926), the first Reds player of the 20th century to be elected to the Hall of Fame, people's eyes glaze over. Too long ago. Just a name in a record book.

But Irv saw Roush play center and talked with him from the bleachers. On fly balls in the gap, he heard Roush yell to the right-fielder Burns, ''Take it, George!''

Irv attended one Reds game last year. He intends to get to several this year (''How in the heck did we trade for a 50-home run hitter and a 16-game winner?'' he wonders.)

He pounds his fist into the pocket three times, staccato-quick. The sound resonates throughout the house. Whap! Whap! Whap!

''Boy, what a pocket,'' Irv says.

His dad, Fred, a carpenter, built this two-story home at the turn of the century. Irv's birthmother, Matilda Mueller, died of cancer in 1912 at 32, when Irv was two. That was the year the Reds moved from their glorious, but overly snug, ballpark, the Palace of the Fans, and moved into Redland Field.

After Irv's mom died, Fred ''farmed out'' to various families his four sons -- including baby-of-the-family Irv -- until Fred could get his feet back on the ground. Eventually, he found Margaret ''Maggie'' Ganz from Pomeroy to keep up the house, fix the meals and help him raise his boys. Two years later, they married.

''A swell, swell lady,'' Irv says. ''Only mom I ever knew.''

Upstairs, in his parents' bedroom, Irv was born in 1910 . . . next to that room, in a smaller room, is where Irv lived when he got married in 1936. He remembers 1936 well, not only because that's the year he married Ginny, with whom he celebrates his 63rd wedding anniversary this year, but because Maggie threw out his baseball cards.

These were the cards Mr. Frohlinger, from across the street, had given to Irv. Mr. Frohlinger was a chain-smoker. The cigarettes came with cards. Irv had some cards of players who pre-dated even Hans Wagner.

''Mom didn't mean any harm by it,'' Irv says. ''Just trying to make room for me and Ginny.''

Irv gets up from his easy chair.

He moves the molasses-brown glove to where its pocket is resting gently against his left knee. He moves his ungloved hand to his right knee. He bends forward slightly, in fielding position. He smacks the pocket.

''C'mon baby,'' Irv says to no one in particular.

It is 1919 again.

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Irv is back on the rough, stone-studded baseball field known as ''The Tips,'' where the Ada Street Boys played their baseball games on Saturday mornings against various teams in the neighborhood: the Flora Streeters, the Stratford Avenue Boys, the St. Monica Boys.

Irv's cap came from Paul Derringer, who wore it in the 1940 World Series. (Michael Keating | ZOOM)

The Tips was so named because it sat at the hillside dead-end of Fairview Avenue, next to the Fairview Incline, a traction system on which a stationary car for passengers climbed the Fairview Hill from McMicken Avenue below. On hot days, Irv and the boys would set up a lemonade stand next to the incline-house on Fairview Hill. The stand would catch the eye of people coming and going. Next to the incline is also where the boys set up their telescope. The telescope belonged to Gordon Scherer, who lived on nearby Southfield Avenue, a block over from Irv's.

Gordon, with one eye pressed to the telescope that pointed at Redland Field, liked to do the play-by-play for Irv and the other boys. Jack Grishaber, who like Gordon was three years older than Irv, kept a book of Reds statistics, to which he often referred.

''We could see home plate and third base,'' Irv recalls. ''Because of the way the buildings were situated beyond the right and center field walls, we couldn't see first or second base. We could see the hitters swing the bat, and we could hear from the crowd reaction whether it was a hit or an out.''

Irv's idol then was Heinie Groh, who is remembered as the originator of the ''bottle'' bat -- a thin-handle job that flared immediately into a bottle shape to give Heinie a wider hitting area for hitting the curve ball.

Irv remembers the bat, sure, but what he sees in his mind's eye, is a line drive off Heinie's bat going over the shortstop's head.

''Heinie wouldn't get a look if he were in the minors today,'' Irv says. ''Too small. But, boy, could he hit. Always up there in the .300s.''

From his view through the telescope, Gordon Scherer would have described to Irv and the others how Reds leadoff hitter Morrie Rath turned away from the opening pitch of White Sox pitcher Eddie Cicotte in the 1919 World Series, but couldn't avoid it.

The fix was in.

But from behind the lens, of course, the boys knew none of it.

It was the World Series, the first one in Cincinnati, and up on that hill, peering down into the field, the boys were a joyous part of it.

''Eddie (Roush) swore to his dying day the White Sox didn't throw it,'' Irv says. ''Eddie said, 'Don't you believe a word of it! We beat 'em fair and square. We were the better team.' It's a shame we'll never know.''

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A year later, when the news hit the front pages that the White Sox had indeed fixed the World Series. Irv was 10 years old.

He had already been delivering newspapers for four years. Post, Times-Star, even had a half-dozen customers who got the Volksblatt, a German-language newspaper in town.

''My German customers would talk to me when I brought them their paper, but I didn't understand a word they were saying,'' Irv recalls, laughing. ''I'd just nod my head. Although my father's dad was from Germany, my dad didn't want any connections with the old country. He was proud of this country. 'We're Americans!' he'd say. Raised the flag every morning here, lowered it every night.''

Irv's dad was a baseball fan.

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His four boys loved the Reds.

On warm days when the windows were open, the Bollinger boys heard the roars of the crowd at Redland Field from inside their home. Irv will never forget the day he watched as the Crosstown Street Car did a wheelie up the tracks after a big Reds victory, sparks flying all over the place, and the passengers yee-hawing it all the way up Fairview Avenue.

''The street car had this big iron bar that stuck out from the back of it,'' Irv says. ''Guys were hanging all over the car, including off the iron bar. I heard them yell, ''1 . . . 2 . . . 3!'' and they put all their weight on the back of the car and on that iron bar and it popped the street car right off its front end. And there it went down the track on just its back wheels!''

Irv is laughing so hard at the memory, his eyes are watering.

''Funniest thing I ever saw. People were crazy back in those days, too. They drove that motorman crazy, I know that.''

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When Irv's dad traveled to old Cheviot Field to watch semi-pro games in the 1920s, Irv would tag along and gather up broken bats and balls that had lost their covers. On really good days, Irv would find a discarded glove with the pocket rotted out.

At home, in his dad's carpenter shop above the garage, Irv would glue together the cracked bat, pound in some nails, wrap it with tape. From his mother's sewing room, he'd find a couple needles and some thick thread or string and, cradling the ball between his knees, stitch the cover back on, often with two different colors of thread to give it the look of the major-league balls. If he could find a piece of stray leather somewhere, he'd stitch it into the pocket of the old, worn-out glove; otherwise, he'd stitch two or three layers of cloth into the pocket. He kept his teammates supplied with such gear.

''We had six or seven bats to choose from,'' Irv says. ''Eddie Roush models; Pat Duncan models. Had 'em all.''

Irv was good with his hands. It was his birthright: his German grandfather, who settled in Covington in 1854, was a shoemaker.

Fred, Irv's oldest brother, wasn't much of a player, but Wally, second oldest of the Bollinger boys, was a good pitcher. Mil, short for Milford, four years older than Irv, was the team's shortstop. Irv hit leadoff, and played all over, but mostly outfield.

''I could run,'' Irv says. ''That was my stock in trade.''

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Through the lens of the telescope, the boys continued watching Reds games in the early 1920s. By 1922 or 1923, Gordon and Jack went off to college.

The early 1920s were good years for the Reds, even though they never got back to the World Series.

"In 1920, it was Groh at third, Big Jake Daubert at first, Morrie Rath at second, Larry Kopf at short, Ivy Wingo behind the plate, Pat Duncan in left -- he was our Babe Ruth; first Red to hit the ball out of Redland Field -- Roush in center and Greasy Neale in right.''

When Irv went to games, he would always sit in the right-field bleachers. That was high cotton, walking down the hill from Clifton Heights, carrying a jug of lemonade made by Maggie, seven nickels jangling in his pockets to get into the ballpark.

Past the police station with the manure pit out back (policemen didn't ride horses for show back then; there weren't that many cars) where Gordon Scherer and ''Mil'' Bollinger had closed the lid on Irv one day when they were collecting manure to sell to people in the neighborhood who had gardens.

''If they'd kept it closed much longer, I'd have asphxiated -- man what a smell!'' says Irv.

Past the coal house and the ice house where Irv and his buddies would load up the 40-pound sacks of ice on Sunday morning to deliver to their customers for a few nickels, which didn't take on a lot of significance until it added up to 35 cents.

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Irv got his first full-time job as a repairman at the electric company in 1927, the first year in 12 seasons the Reds were without the great Roush in center field. Not coincidentally, it would be 11 years -- 1938 -- before the Reds would climb out of the second division; 1927 was also the year the beloved Reds owner and renowned bon vivant August (Garry) Hermann sold the club.

Irv remained a Reds fan.

Hey, look: there's Powel Crosley Jr. up on the rooftop on Opening Day doing his own play-by-play on his radio station, WLW . . . the great catcher, Ernie Lombardi, and the great pitcher, Paul Derringer, arriving in the early 1930s . . . the first night game . . . the crazy overflow crowd that night in 1935 when the managers couldn't see the players on the field because of all the fans clustered in front of the dugouts . . .

It's 1938 now: there's the great slugging first baseman Frank McCormick, and manager Bill McKechnie, who soon sent for two players from Philadelphia -- Phillies pitcher Bucky Walters and Athletics third baseman Billy Werber.

''Werber turned the Reds around,'' Irv says. ''But my big hero was Bucky Walters.''

Irv went to a lot of games in 1939. When Derringer and Walters pitched, he just assumed the Reds were going to win.

''Bucky won 27; Paul 25.''

Now it's October 1939, and there's Irv arriving in line at Crosley Field at 9 o'clock at night, so he can buy tickets the next morning for the World Series; he is 150th in line . . . listening to the radio on Ada Street in rapt attention as Derringer wins the seventh game of the 1940 World Series, 2-1 . . . Big Klu, then Wally Post and Gus Bell and Frank Robinson bombarding the Crosley Field fences in the 1950s . . . Irv's four sons wrapping him in newspapers one Saturday night at Crosley Field in the late '50s when rain combined with the cool night air and set the 140-pound Irv to shaking . . . Stan the Man was in town that night, and Don Blasingame was playing shortstop for the St. Louis Cardinals.

''Funny how you remember things like that,'' Irv says.

Pete Rose arriving headfirst in 1963 . . . Irv sorry to see Crosley Field abandoned, but there on June 30, 1970, when Riverfront Stadium opened, and oh what a job trying to coax Ginny up the steep aisles into the red seats . . . but oh what a team, the Big Red Machine.

Irv hadn't felt like this about his team since 1919 and 1939-40.

Then, 1990 with Sabo and O'Neill and Larkin, and that bolt out of the blue by Eric Davis in Game 1 of the World Series that set the tone for the sweep of mighty Oakland; Irv hadn't seen a Reds pitcher dominate a World Series like Jose Rijo since Bucky and Paul in '40.

''Wonder what the new ballpark will be like?'' Irv asks.

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EPILOGUE: Gordon Scherer, the boy at the lens of the telescope on Fairview Hill in 1919, became a U.S. Congressman . . . Jack Grishaber, who kept a book of Reds statistics, became comptroller of a mattress factory in town . . . Irv Bollinger, the towheaded wisp of a nine-year-old, still lives on Ada Street. He turns 89 in June. He is the last of the Ada Cubs. His favorite Red is the good-hitting pitcher, Bucky Walters, but pound-for-pound, Irv still swears Heinie Groh is the best player he ever saw.