The Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks are saddened to announce that owner and chairman Bruce Thom passed away Thursday in Fargo. He was 83.
“From initially signing Doug Simunic and Jeff Bittiger in 1995 for the inaugural season of RedHawks baseball, recruiting Maury Wills to be our color commentator, playing “Ride Cowboy Ride” at the opening of the gates each night and creating Big Bruce — still the Guinness Book of World Records’ largest wooden baseball bat — Dad’s legacy will be forever remembered with the RedHawks,” team president and CEO Brad Thom said. “We will continue to uphold the highest standards and winning tradition he set for RedHawks baseball.”
From the early days of expansion talks with the Northern League as an executive with Otter Tail Corporation to buying the team in 2004 and overseeing all six of the organization’s league titles, Bruce was the central figure in RedHawks baseball for three decades.
A successful businessman in his day-to-day life, Bruce loved to get involved with the team and its fans through Pattonesque inspiration as “The General” and even occasional appearances as “Willie the Clown.”
“You can’t sit here in your office and know what’s going on upstairs,” he told The Forum in 2004. “You never learn anything by being the president. You learn something by being an average Joe in the seat.”
Memories of childhood afternoons spent watching the Fargo-Moorhead Twins from the Knothole Gang section at Fargo’s Barnett Field fueled an eagerness to bring back an affordable, family-friendly baseball environment to the area with the new RedHawks franchise some four decades later.
Despite initial skepticism from many about the team’s viability, that core belief allowed him and the team to repay every cent of the City of Fargo’s investment into Newman Outdoor Field while building the RedHawks into a lasting pillar of the Fargo-Moorhead community.
The RedHawks will continue to honor Bruce’s legacy throughout the team’s 30th season in 2025.
A memorial service will be held at Olivet Lutheran Church in Fargo on Friday, January 10, at 2 p.m.
