Denny Ruh, the Green Bay Blue Ribbons founder and longtime manager, dies

Denny Ruh fell in love with baseball as a child in the 1940s after he learned Pee Wee Reese was playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. At the time, it had more to do with Reese’s name than it did for his talents during a hall of fame career.

Reese retired after the 1958 season, but Ruh’s passion for the game remained strong.

He played, coached and eventually started his own team as the founder of the Green Bay Blue Ribbons, a semi-pro squad that played in the Wisconsin State League from 1970 to 1995 at Joannes Stadium.

Ruh died Friday after a brief health battle. He was 82.

“The Blue Ribbons family was saddened to hear about the passing of Denny Ruh,” the team said in a statement. “A leader on and off the field, Denny was one of the founding fathers of Bay Baseball, Ltd. in 1970 and was the first manager in Green Bay Blue Ribbons history, leading the team to 12 Wisconsin State League titles over the course of their first 26 seasons. A seven-time WSL manager of the year, Rue was a driving force in keeping baseball in the greater Green Bay area, working with the Blue Ribbons, Sultans and De Pere Dodgers.

“The contributions he made to the baseball world and the Green Bay community were immense, and the impact he had on the players he worked with will help carry on his legacy. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends during this difficult time.”

As passionate as he was for baseball, Ruh didn’t start playing until he was a teenager for a tavern team in the county league the summer before his freshman year at Valders High School.

Although he admitted with a laugh last year that it didn’t sound appropriate that he was 15 and playing for a bar team, he also learned more about the game that first summer than he did his entire young life.

He was a pitcher and third baseman, but his career ended when he was 17 or 18 after he threw his arm out. He figured it might have had to do with previously pitching three games in one day.

It didn’t stop him from having an impact in baseball after he moved to Green Bay and learned that there had not been a team here since the Los Angeles Dodgers pulled their minor league affiliate about a decade earlier in 1960.

Ruh met with former Green Bay Press-Gazette sports editor Len Wagner for advice on who he should speak to about starting a team.

Ruh and a group of men started Bay Baseball Ltd. They formed a plan in winter 1969 to have a team prepared to play that summer in the newly created Wisconsin State League.

More than 1,000 people turned out for the first game. Ruh remembered glancing up in the stands and seeing familiar faces in the same seats every game. He also remembered Fireworks Night when 2,100 fans arrived and the concessions stand ran out of everything but beer.

Not only did Ruh win 12 championships, but he also got to coach some notable standouts. The list included future rookie of the year and two-time World Series champion Eric Hinske along with other MLB players in Bob Wickman and Paul Wilmet.

“We had some great teams,” Ruh said. “And we had good community support.”

Ruh shut down the Blue Ribbons after the 1995 season and created the Sultans. He served as the president, general manager and manager. The team played in the Independent Prairie League but struggled its first season and finished 18-46.

It turned out to be the Sultans’ only year in pro ball because of financial problems. They played in the semi-pro ranks in 1997 before they became known as the Green Bay Billy’s.

“We thought that we were going to do something that would go over, and it didn’t,” Ruh said. “Maybe because a lot of teams we played were not local. We did a lot of traveling. That ate up a lot of money.”

Ruh wasn’t done just yet.

He brought another team back to the WSL for the first time in almost two decades when he created the De Pere Dodgers in 2016, the first Green Bay area team in the league since the Billy’s in 1999.

The Dodgers moved to Joannes in 2019 and were rebranded as the Greater Green Bay Blue Ribbons in 2020, although Ruh always wanted it to be made clear that the current version of the Blue Ribbons wasn’t part of the history of the original one.

He already was retired by last summer. He had no plans to get back into the game or to start another team.

But Ruh was honored in June when he and the late former Blue Ribbons star and St. Norbert College assistant Dick Zeratsky were the first two people enshrined in the Green Bay Baseball Hall of Fame.

It turned out to be the perfect final tribute.

“My aspirations with baseball is just watching it. … This will be my fourth hall of fame,” Ruh said a few days before the ceremony. “I’m not doing any bragging, but I got to be in the Lakeshore Hall of Fame, and the Wisconsin State League Hall of Fame and the one down in Milwaukee with the old-timers. Now, I will be in this one. That’s my quota. It will be enough.”

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Denny Ruh, the Green Bay Blue Ribbons founder and longtime manager, dies