KEN WILLIS: Daytona Cubs super-fan "Front Row Joe" dies; saw every home game for 21 years
There are few things as uniquely American as minor-league baseball, and our humble yet historic ballpark on City Island has been a longtime contributor to the mosaic.
For a whopping 21 years, one constant at the local yard was diehard fan Joe Rowe.
Diehard? That actually undersells Rowe’s passion for our old Daytona Cubs and current Tortugas.
For 21 years, from the summer of ’95 to June of ’16 — 1,439 consecutive home games — Rowe took his seat in the boxes alongside the home dugout at Jackie Robinson Ballpark.
Along the way, quite naturally, he became “Front Row Joe.”
While no longer attending games in person, Joe remained a baseball fan until the end, which came this past week at age 68.
“Instead of going to ballgames, he’d watch on TV and be satisfied,” says longtime friend Buzzy Alexander. “He was still a big fan.”
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The local Cubs gave way to the Tortugas, a Reds affiliate, in 2015 and a little bit of the magic was gone for Joe — “after the Cubs left, he lost some of his drive,” Buzzy says.
Some health issues also cropped up and made things more difficult for him to get to the ballpark and enjoy the evening.
For several years prior, the nightly routine at home games included Front Row Joe walking to a sign on the left-field wall that had his running total. He'd update the number and return to his seat.
You could literally call him a “minor-league celebrity,” but he soaked it in with gusto.
It was June 8, 2016, when Joe’s box seat sat empty for the first time in 21 years.
“It was just time to end the streak,” he said then, downplaying any personal issues that might’ve played a role.
The first game he missed, he didn’t completely miss — he listened to the broadcast on AM radio, while admitting to a little anxiety about staying home.
“I was apprehensive,” he said.
More so than he let on at the time.
“It was devastating for him to end his streak,” Buzzy says. “He would never let on that it was, but it was. That was his life, for so many years. He lived, he breathed, he loved the Cubs. He just didn’t want to give it up. Understandable. It was the thing that kept him going.”
Back at the streak’s end, Joe said he was looking forward to “doing something else with my time.”
“I don’t know what’s around the corner,” he said. “It’s been a long, strange trip and I’m gonna just take it day by day.”
As we all do, in our own ways.
“I was telling his brother,” Buzzy says, “Joe is up in Heaven, playing baseball, running the bases, having a ball. I know he’s in a better place, and that’s a blessing.”
Family and friends are hoping to have a small memorial sometime soon at the ballpark, assuming details can be worked out.
More sad news
Joe Biddle died last Wednesday at 78 in his native Tennessee.
If you’ve been in this area a long, long time, you’ll remember Joe for gracing the News-Journal’s sports pages from 1972-79. That after he'd served in Vietnam (Air Force) and before he returned to Tennessee and spent a long career in print and radio in Nashville.
In an industry not exactly brimming with social graces, Joe was known across the Southeast for classing up any press box he entered while also making it a more enjoyable place to “work.”
— Reach Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: "Front Row Joe," Daytona Cubs super-fan, dies at 68 | KEN WILLIS
