Meet the last fan to leave Crosley Field

This is part of a series about the final days of Crosley Field and the way it lives on in bits and pieces strewn throughout Greater Cincinnati. Miss something? Check out all of our Crosley Field stories here.

Frank X. O'Toole sat alone in the shadows.

With a half-smile on his face, the last fan at Crosley Field kept looking around the near-empty ballpark after the Reds defeated the Giants 5-4 on June 24, 1970.

The lights dimmed.

All but one of the 28,027 fans had left. Funny, O'Toole had never planned to be the last to find the exit.

A few days short of his 42nd birthday, the father of four from Western Hills had driven alone hours earlier in his white 1965 Pontiac Tempest Convertible.

Johnny Bench and Lee May had hit back-to-back home runs in the eighth inning off Juan Marichal in that final game. Reds reliever Wayne Granger got Bobby Bonds to ground out on a slider for the final out. Granger told reporters it felt like the Reds had won the pennant.

The result had to please O'Toole despite an otherwise sorrowful evening. He just wanted to savor the experience. So he sat in the field-level seats behind third base and reflected on how much Crosley Field meant to his life.

"It was very much in his fiber – who he was – who he became," son Frank X. O'Toole Jr. told The Enquirer this spring.

"Crosley was just a part of him – like you would have a great car that you like and you don't want to get rid of it. It was a place where he could go to work, it was a place where he could socialize, a place where he could bring his family. It was part of his neighborhood when neighborhoods were really tight."

The late O'Toole, a 1947 Western Hills High School graduate, was a Cincinnati police officer, but he was not on duty that night. He loved his family but this was his night. He didn't return home until close to 4 a.m. June 25.

"He couldn't believe that would be the last game at Crosley Field," daughter Tara (O'Toole) Ruffing said. "He thoroughly enjoyed Crosley Field."

The elder O'Toole had had a 25-year career in the Cincinnati Police Department before retiring in 1978. He worked games at Crosley Field. He knew the players well.

O'Toole and Pete Rose met at Frisch's on Glenway Avenue when Rose was still in high school. Rose used to visit the family house on Brater Avenue in Western Hills.

Frank X. O'Toole Jr. interviewed Rose for a sixth- or seventh-grade assignment and still has the interview on tape. He used to wear a glove from Rose's rookie year before he lost it at a park. Rose once gave him a bat out of the trunk of his car after a game. The youngster used it in Knothole. He still has it.

The elder O'Toole enjoyed watching Ted Kluszewski and listening to Waite Hoyt on the radio. He was personal friends with Joe Nuxhall.

Crosley Field held so many memories for the elder O'Toole it's no wonder he didn't want to leave on that Wednesday night in late June.

Extra security was put in place around the ballpark for the game, but it wasn't necessary. Organist Ronnie Dale played "Auld Lang Syne" at 10:56 p.m. Fans cried leaving the ballpark.

Some brought home souvenirs that night. Sometime after the game, O'Toole grabbed some items.

Truth was, O'Toole went to work helping to clean up with the employees. Sentimentality gripped him. He filled paper cups with dirt near the dugouts and home plate. He kept the cups wrapped in plastic bags. They would stay that way for decades.

O'Toole also shimmied up a pole that evening, his eyes on an arrowed sign that pointed toward the press gate.

"It was hanging there and it said, 'Hey, O'Toole, take me,' " O'Toole said in an interview in the 1980s.

He nabbed four orange chairs, other signs and a few framed league rules notices. Those items were stored for years in his basement.

O'Toole gave all those items to his son in the early 2000s. They are stored in the younger O'Toole's garage in Hanover Township..

Frank O'Toole died in March 2004. He didn't much care to boast about what he did that night in 1970. But people knew.

But being the last fan at Crosley wasn't mentioned in his obituary.

His wife, Vera, who died in 2000, also enjoyed following the Reds and liked knowing the trivia about her husband. She purchased a book that mentioned his name as a gift one year.

To the surviving O'Toole children – Frank, Tara and Nancy – knowing their father's admiration for Crosley Field remains a source of pride.

After the last game, O'Toole returned to the ballpark on duty with Frank and Tara during the impound lot days sometime between August 1971 and April 1972 and gave them a behind-the-scenes tour.

"I think in his mind it made him look at us that we were a big part of Crosley Field," Ruffing said.

Riverfront Stadium never had the same impact on O'Toole.

"(Crosley Field) was where my heart was,'" O'Toole used to say.

In late March, O'Toole's son Frank opened a bag of the Crosley Field dirt that his father had so safely secured. It was the first time in nearly 45 years the bag was opened.

This was no ordinary cup of dirt. It was part of a memorable night for a man who so loved Crosley Field and his family.