“BLUUUUES GOAL!”
Tom Calhoun, longtime St. Louis Blues PA announcer, comes over the speakers and announces a goal. All the fans cheer, but everyone is more excited for what comes after the announcement. The “TowelMan” comes up to the edge of the upper level, section 314, and starts waving a towel. Fans begin cheering and counting the number of goals with “TowelMan.” Everyone is hoping to be the lucky fan that catches the towel thrown, and the fan that catches it gets to go home with a special memory that lasts a lifetime.
Ron Baechle, better known to St. Louis as the “TowelMan” has been a fan of the St. Louis Blues since he was a child. Baechle has been a fan of the Blues since the beginning of the franchise, when he was around 9 years old, and went to his first game at 11 years old.
After going to a Peoria Rivermen game in the International Hockey League (IHL), who was the Blues’ farm team at the time, Baechle got the idea to start waving towels after each goal. Seeing that Peoria had a similar tradition, Baechle wanted to bring that to St. Louis.
“We just started doing it, because we saw the Blues farm team in Peoria do something similar, and that’s where we got the idea,” Baechle said.
In the 1989-90 NHL season, Baechle started waving the towels, but didn’t get much recognition for it until the 1994-95 season. This was the season the Blues moved from the St. Louis Arena, also called The Checkerdome, to the Kiel Center, now called Enterprise Center.
Doug Holler, a long-time Blues fan and Principal at Lakeview Elementary School in the Wentzville School District, has been following the team since they were at the Checkerdome.
“Going to the old Arena, which used to be called the Checkerdome, that was definitely, the first memory of a Blues game I had,” Holler said.
The tradition of Baechle waving and throwing towels has been going on for 36 years and counting. He has no relation to the Blues, and to this day still does not. He does not get paid, and he does everything with the help of his sponsors he has acquired over the years, with getting his tickets, getting the towels, getting to the games, everything. One big question many fans always wonder is, what is on the towels?
“All my sponsors appear on the towels, and I’m self-employed. A lot of these people are my customers,” Baechle said as to what is on the towels.
Baechle is in charge of getting all the towels printed for the games, and getting them ready for game time. He estimates they print about 300 towels per season for the games, Ron Baechle Advertising designs the towels, and they highlight all his sponsors, along with an image of himself mid towel wave on it.
“My son is now a big Blues fan, and we try to go to at least one game a year. So from a young age, he always enjoyed when the team scored and watching the Towel Man,” Holler said. “I think a lot of the younger generations, younger fans, like to see the Towel Man. I think that’s a big draw for some of the younger fans. It’s definitely something I remember my son really enjoying and being excited about when he went to the Blues games after they scored.”
When Baechle first started this tradition, he used bath sized towels, but quickly switched to golf towels as the bath towels were too big and he would hit people in the head with them when he would swing them. To make the towels dense enough to throw far, he folds the towels up tight like a flag fold before the game, and keeps them in a bag during the game.
With having season tickets, Baechle is able to go to all 41 home games during the season, but like everyone, things happen, and he is not able to make it to every game every season.
“I missed one game this year because I was gone on a cruise. Before Covid, I went seven years without missing a game, and in any given year, I might miss maybe one to three games, on average,” Baechle said.
This season, Baechle got to be featured in the Blues commercial with Carshield, which they have been doing consistently for the past few seasons. This year, the commercial featured many St. Louis legends, called “Legends Lane”, with Pat Maroon, Brett Hull, Jake Neighbours, Brayden Schenn, Chris Pronger, Ozzie Smith, Issac Bruce, Ric Flair, Jeremy Maclin, and of course, the Towel Man.
Baechle never thought “in a million years” that throwing towels at Blues games would get this big, leading to him having the opportunity to be in this commercial, along with how famous he has become in St. Louis.
Outside of Blues games, Baechle has always liked art and drawing, and became a commercial graphic artist. He has done art since high school, and now has been self-employed for 40 years. Baechle’s oldest daughter, Jessica Tapy, also works with him and has her own graphics business, Tapy Creative. Along with doing graphic art, Baechle is also plays drums in a band called Free Play, that plays for charity events, and plays for the special kids once a month as well.
“I feel very honored that I get to do something that everybody thinks is very neat and I keep doing it, because it’s fun. I love doing it. It’s been a blessing and a tool to be able to give back,” Baechle said.
