Former Blue Sox owner, 69, dies

By ELIZABETH COOPER
Observer-Dispatch
Posted Jan 19, 2009 @ 09:55 PM

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On the day that Robert Fowler bought the Utica Blue Sox baseball team, he walked into local attorney Robert Julian’s office without an appointment and asked him to work with the team.

“He had heard I was a baseball fan and asked me if I’d represent the team,” Julian recalled Monday.

Julian said he made the decision in less than a heartbeat.

Fowler, the longtime owner of the Utica Blue Sox baseball team and a former president of the Mohawk Valley Chamber of Commerce died Thursday, according to the Orlando Sentinel, a newspaper for which Fowler once wrote.

Robert Fowler died after a 2 1/2 year fight with Lou Gehrig’s disease at the age of 69, the Sentinel said.

Julian remembered his friend as “a vigorous, can-do fellow” who was “very committed to this community.”

He also remembered Fowler’s sense of humor, and called him “a riot” and “a good story teller.”
Fowler owned the Blue Sox from 1984 to 2001, when he sold the team to baseball legend Cal Ripken Jr.

Joanne Gerace, who was general manager of the Blue Sox under Fowler, said she had a good working relationship with him.

“We worked together with one thing in mind,” she said. “To bring quality baseball and a great baseball atmosphere to the city of Utica and the Utica area, and to make our professional sports team one of the best in the New York-Penn League.”

In June 1995, Fowler applied for the job of president of the Mohawk Valley Chamber of Commerce. He beat out about 50 other candidates for the job, in which he remained until about the time he sold the team, according to O-D archives.

Former Utica Mayor Tim Julian, Robert Julian’s brother, called Fowler “a guy who liked to shake things up,” and said he had been a proponent of renovating the Hotel Utica.

During his tenure as chamber president, Fowler advocated for consolidation and regionalization, Tim Julian said.

Don Carbone, who sat on the chamber board of directors when Fowler was president said he was a good leader.

“He was a very active person when he got something in his mind he thought was the right thing to do,” Carbone said.

Fowler started his professional life as a journalist and spent time covering major league sports in Minnesota before going to work for the Sentinel, that paper’s article said.

Members of the family could not be reached Monday evening.

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