Dolly Stark: Renaissance Man in Blue
He went from a homeless street urchin on New York’s Lower East Side to become the National League’s most popular umpire and the only ump in history to be given his own “appreciation day”
DOLLY STARK learned early in life that nothing came easy. Born Abraham Stark in 1897, he was a child of New York’s Lower East Side slums. His parents, Simon and Gussie Stark, were Jews who had found their way individually from the Russian Empire to New York City, where they married around 1890. The Stark’s had two daughters and three sons, with Abraham being the youngest of the brood. Because of the poor diet and unhealthy environment of the family’s tenement surroundings, Abraham was a frail, undersized kid.
The Stark’s already precarious financial situation took a nosedive after Simon died in 1907. The nine-year-old Abraham was put to work as the family struggled to get by. Abraham took every job he could manage at his age. He sold newspapers, ran errands around the city for 2 cents per trip, and any took odd job that came his way. Eventually, he landed a job pushing a street cart of fresh fruit and vegetables through the teaming Lower East Side tenement streets. Since the job entailed stocking his cart at 3am each morning, there was not much time for the young boy to have a childhood. With everyone in the family working all they could to pay the bills, no one was paying much attention to the boy.
Years later, Stark told Baseball Magazine, “Such experiences are all right to look back upon, but they’re not pleasant in the living.”
While Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, Bugsy Siegel, and Louis Lepke were turning to a life of crime on the same Lower East Side streets as Abraham, Dolly kept his nose and conscience clean. Inevitably, though, this tough life took its toll on the frail pre-teen.
On a freezing winter evening in 1909, a cop on patrol came upon Abraham slumped up against a telephone pole where he had collapsed with exhaustion. The cop took pity on the boy, taking him to Grace Home, an orphan asylum. Today, the thought of an orphanage evokes a hellish experience, but Stark appreciated his year and a half at Grace Home, telling a reporter, “I had a roof over my head and something to eat. We were well enough treated, and I was certainly better off than I had been on the streets. Then one of my older brothers got a job, so I went home.”
THE FAMILY was finally able to move out of the tenements to the less overcrowded Bronx. While he still had to work to contribute to the family, Stark attended school through the 8th grade. He also had the opportunity to play sports. Though still frail and slight, Stark excelled in basketball and baseball. He was quick and agile, making him an ideal middle infielder. When he had to quit school to work fulltime, Stark began playing for one of the many semipro teams in the city.
He had swapped “Abraham” to the less ethnic “Albert” but was beginning to be known by the nickname, “Dolly.” The name came from the Brooklyn Superbas shortstop with whom he shared the same last name and position, Monroe “Dolly” Stark. The name stuck and he’d be known as Dolly for the rest of his life.
Stark rose up fast though the different levels of New York’s semipro scene. His good glove and natural agility made up for his slight build. At age 18, he was barely 5’-8” and 115 pounds soaking wet. He would often be described as “high strung” and “intense,” but he was also very personable and made friends easily. People enjoyed his company and couldn’t help but admire his drive to better himself. Over the years, Stark would be able to rely on these connections as he moved through careers and explored new opportunities.
To Stark’s delight, his baseball talent had begun earning him a few extra bucks per game. In 1916, he was recruited by the best semipro team in Manhattan, the Bronx Athletics. Stark was now able to test his skills against the best Negro League teams of the day, and occasionally major league teams after their season ended. In one such game against a team of Yankees players, Stark was approached by scout Eddie Holly. He was signed to a contract and given an invite to the Yankees 1917 spring training camp in Macon, Georgia.
THAT SPRING, Stark found that he was physically outclassed by the larger big leaguers. But his hustle and positive attitude struck a chord with Yankees manager Bill Donovan. He sent Stark to play with the Tifton and later the Eufaula clubs of the Class D Dixie League for more experience. Unfortunately, America entered the World War in April, and by August the Dixie League had folded.
Out of a job, Stark was able to find employment with the Bethlehem Steel Company. Though he was ostensibly hired to build war material, Stark’s primary focus was the company’s baseball team. Big steel and ship building companies were a controversial haven for pro ballplayers who wanted to stay out of the war. Shoeless Joe Jackson, Rogers Hornsby, and even Babe Ruth sat out the war playing ball for these large companies.
After spending 1918 playing alongside and against major leaguers, Stark was signed by the Newark Bears of the International League. The International League was one of the three top minor leagues at the time, just one step from the majors. Halfway through the 1919 season his contract was purchased by the Washington Senators and he was told to report to their training camp in Tampa the following spring.
A few days into spring training, Stark hurried a throw to first from deep third base and heard something pop in his arm. He spent the next three weeks out of action and was sent back to the International League’s Jersey City club. Stark was now 22 and a two-time bust in big league tryouts. While he sure had the moxie and drive, he just did not have the physical size to make it as a major leaguer. Desperate to stay in the game, Stark tried everything he could to bulk up. Years later, he reminisced to a New York Daily News sportswriter, “I couldn’t hit the ball hard enough, so I asked one of the veterans what I could do to build myself up. He said ‘Eat plenty of meat, potatoes and gravy, kid, and drink a bottle of Guiness’ stout every day.’ Stout, mind you, at a quarter a bottle, out of a bush leaguer’s pay. But I drank the stuff, along with the meat, potatoes and gravy. You can guess what happened. Yeah, I wound up ten pounds lighter than when I started.”
He gave baseball one more season, this time back with Newark, but called it quits for good when he was traded to a team down south. He knew his slight body couldn’t take another humid southern summer. Stark was about to take a job in New York’s financial district when luck finally turned in his favor.
BY CHANCE, Stark ran into an old minor league acquaintance, Clyde Engle, who was now coach of the University of Vermont baseball team. Engle asked if he could umpire and, if he could, he had a job for him. While Stark had no official experience as an arbitrator, he had umped a few spring training games when he was with the Senators. Engle told him to come to Burlington at the end of April.
Stark, who would later be well known all around the National League for his dapper fashion sense, felt that one needed to be dressed properly to command respect on the field. As he told the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, “Well, they were surprised to see me come out on the field in a new blue double-breasted suit and with my ball shoes well shined, and ready for business.” Besides being the game’s most fashionably dressed participant, Stark did a real professional job calling the game. That night he received phone calls from two more universities offering him work as an umpire. A new career was born.
He was now working college games every day of the week while playing and managing a semipro team in Montreal on the weekends. As a kid, he was dealt more tragedy and underpriviledge than most could handle. Now, opportunities seemed to meet him at every turn.
In the winter of 1922, Stark was keeping in shape playing basketball at a Vermont gym. The director of athletics for Burlington High School happened to see him play and offered him the job as high school basketball coach. Stark promptly led the team to the best record ever achieved by a school in the state’s history, and they finished runners-up in the New England High School Tournament.
Soon after, Stark ran into Jeff Tesreau, former Giants star pitcher who he’d become friendly with back in his semipro days with the Bronx Athletics. Tesreau was now coaching the Dartmouth University baseball team and asked if Stark would umpire all their home games. Stark’s coaching success at Burlington led to a position as Dartmouth’s freshman hoops coach. Despite having but an eighth-grade education, he endeared himself to the Ivy Leaguers and was named Dartmouth’s freshman baseball coach as well.
This led to additional umpire work for Yale, and finally in 1925, Dolly Stark was officiating all three Metropolitan universities: Columbia, N.Y.U., and Fordham.
So, what made Dolly Stark so successful as an umpire?
In the early 1920s, most umpires, from the sandlots to the big leagues, called their game from a stationary spot, rarely moving from their position despite the situation. Due to both his inexperience and a never-ending desire to do the best job possible, Dolly Stark changed all that. Behind the plate, Stark moved and adjusted his stance to best judge the location of the ball. When a player made contact, Stark took off on the runner’s heels, following him down to first so he could be in a position to accurately call the play. On a long fly ball down the line, Stark was off and running, striving to be in the best place to call it fair or foul. As a former player, he knew the game from a participant’s perspective, and he studied each player to anticipate how he would react in certain situations so he could be in the right place to follow the play. These are things we take for granted today, but back in the early 1920s this was revolutionary.
Dolly Stark’s success and (rare for an umpire) popularity did not go unnoticed. As early as 1926 he was approached by American League officials offering a trial. When this did not come through, he got back into organized baseball through the minor leagues. In 1927, Stark was asked to fill in for three weeks as an umpire in the Eastern League. Three weeks later the league extended his contract. Then, after just seven weeks of umpiring in the minor leagues, Stark received a long-distance call requesting he come to New York to sign a contract with the National League!
STARTING ON Opening Day of the 1928 season in Cincinnati, players made the rookie ump’s life miserable. They argued calls, cussed him out, and did everything they could to intimidate the diminutive man in blue. And since he had no formal umpire training, Stark was not even sure he was doing a good job. That all changed once Bill Klem observed Stark work behind the plate.
With a career stretching back to 1905, Bill Klem was regarded as the best umpire of baseball’s golden age. Respectably known as "the Old Arbitrator," Klem’s biggest contribution to the game was the hand signals he developed so fans far out in the bleachers would know if he called a ball or strike.
In a 1935 Sporting News article, Dolly Stark recalled his first meeting with the legendary umpire:
“Who taught you to move behind the plate like that?” he snapped after the game. “Who taught you to go from side to side, to follow the plays on the bases like you do?”
Stark thought he had done something wrong. “Nobody,” he stammered, truthfully, “That’s the way I’ve always done it myself. I can follow the ball better.”
Dolly was breathless as he recounted the whole thing. “You’ve got it, boy!” Klem told me. “You’re the first natural I’ve seen in years.”
Despite Klem’s blessing, Stark couldn’t get past the constant power struggles with the players. Halfway through the season he abruptly quit. While the resignation of any other first year ump would have been written off as just simple attrition, Bill Klem thought otherwise. He sent the troubled rookie a letter in which Klem alternated between “sympathy and dynamite” to convince Stark to return. The older ump’s words worked, and Dolly Stark finished the rest of the season without incident.
However, 1929 turned out to be just as turbulent. Stark believed in taking his job absolutely seriously. To be completely impartial, he maintained that an umpire should have no contact with players, sportswriters, or fans. This meant long, lonely nights in hotel rooms – a veritable torture for the friendly and outgoing Stark. Things on the field didn’t improve, either. The fans’ caustic words stung him in every ballpark he worked. Perhaps smelling blood in the water since he’d resigned once already, the ballplayers continued to pile on as well. His frustrations publicly boiled over during a game in which he ejected the entire Boston Braves bench. Convinced he did not have the right temperament to do the job properly, he tendered his resignation.
National League president John Heydler refused to accept Stark’s resignation, instead suggesting he take a leave of absence. Stark found that he spent most of his sabbatical watching games at the Polo Grounds at Yankee Stadium. He loved the game, and he couldn’t stay away from it. He reluctantly returned, determined to make it work this time.
Bill Klem took the struggling umpire into his crew, and the two quickly formed a tight friendship. As he told the Sporting News, “Bill took me in hand then,” Stark said, proudly. “He showed me things like the arm pointing left for strike one, right for strike two, left for the third one. Always he was after me. We’d be walking along the street and he’d ask me why I was slow on a play in the game that afternoon. I’d confess and he’d shout: ‘You can’t miss those!’”
Though he remained high-strung and intensely lonely, Dolly Stark quickly earned a reputation for competence second only to Bill Klem. The players had come to realize that his hustle and revolutionary approach meant more accurate calls, and even the most agitated fans begrudgingly accepted Stark’s decisions as likely the correct call.
AS A NOD to his talent, Stark was selected to work the 1931 World Series. The Series pitted the Philadelphia Athletics, winner of the two previous Fall Classics, against the hardscrabble St. Louis Cardinals. With sluggers Jimmie Foxx and Al Simmons backed by the pitching of Lefty Grove and George Earnshaw, Philly was the odds-on favorite to win. However, the “Gas House Gang” Cardinals led by scrappy Frankie Frisch and speedster Pepper Martin were determined to beat the odds.
There are two specific instances during the Series that illustrate how seriously Dolly Stark took his job. Oddly enough, both involve Philadelphia Athletics second baseman Max “Camera Eye” Bishop and Cardinals pitcher “Wild Bill” Hallahan. As Bishop’s nickname suggests, he seldom swung at anything outside of a strike, and Hallahan’s moniker speaks for itself.
The first instance happened in the top of the ninth in Game 2 at St. Louis. The Cardinals were up 2-0. “Wild Bill” Hallahan had loaded the bases with Cardinals, but the Athletics were down to their final out. Bishop came to bat, representing the winning run. “Camera Eye” hit a long, foul ball to shallow right field where the Athletics bullpen bench was positioned in front of temporary stands for the overflow crowd. Cards first baseman Jim Bottomley raced after it, with Dolly Stark running with him all the way. As the ball sailed over the bullpen bench, Bottomley pushed aside several Athletics pitchers, caught the ball, and disappeared head-first into the crowded stands. Dolly Stark, who was just a few feet away, was able to wave his right hand indicating a clean catch and the game over. Had Stark not followed Bottomley and been in position to make the call, the game and maybe the World Series could have ended differently.
The second instance demonstrates the kind of mental strain that Dolly Stark put himself through as he tried to be the best umpire he could be. This time it is the bottom of the ninth of the seventh and deciding game of this legendary Series. With Cardinals ahead 4-0, the Athletics rallied for two runs. “Wild Bill” Hallahan came in to relieve with two on and two out as Max Bishop stepped to the plate. To a guy as high-strung and nervous as Dolly Stark, this situation was anxiety in overdrive. Bishop worked the count to three and two. The entire ballpark was hanging on that next pitch.
As Stark remembered to Hugh Bradley of the New York Journal American, “I knew what that one pitch could mean and I was sweating in advance to be sure I called it right. Even now in my dreams I can see Hallahan winding up and Bishop standing nonchalantly there.” Stark continued, “The ball was close. Bishop took a cut at it, and in a split second the series was over as Pepper Martin gobbled up a high fly in in center field.”
PERHAPS THE FINEST praise for Dolly Stark’s work came in 1934 and 1935. In both years, players voted Stark the National League’s “Best Umpire.” August 26, 1935 was declared “Dolly Stark Day” at New York’s Polo Grounds. It was the first and only time in baseball history that an umpire was given his own “day.”
Among the pregame festivities, Stark was presented with a new 1935 Packard One Twenty Business Coupe. Though the car was driven onto the field and presented to Stark by National League President Ford Frick, The Packard was actually bought with nickels and dimes contributed by the grateful baseball fans of New York. To show how much the fans really thought of Dolly, consider that the Packard was the premier luxury car in the United States, considered a step above even Cadillac and Lincoln. The One Twenty Business Coupe retailed for around $900 – or $23,000 in today’s money.
BUT, DESPITE the accolades and awards, in private Dolly Stark remained a tormented soul. “Umpiring is a hard business.” He lamented. “You have no friends, you can’t talk to and live with the players and the highest praise for an umpire is silence.”
The isolation and loneliness weren’t the only thing weighing on Stark’s mind. His mother Gussie had lost her sight back in 1920, and his sister Frances suffered mental and health problems that prevented her from working. Both relied on Dolly Stark for financial support. Stark made $9,000 a year, the second highest paid umpire behind Bill Klem. In today’s money that comes to over $200,000. A tidy sum, but besides supporting his mother and sister, Stark had to pay his own travel, food, and lodging during the season. After he was turned down for a raise, Stark became the first umpire hold out. When negotiations broke down, Stark found himself out of a job. To make matters worse, he also lost his basketball and baseball coaching positions at Dartmouth. Yet, just when things seemed dire, Dolly Stark’s connections paid off.
Both Philadelphia teams decided to broadcast their games over the radio starting in 1936. The affable Dolly Stark was offered the job to team up with Bill Dyer on WCAU. As a former ballplayer and ump, Dolly Stark essentially became one of the first radio “color men,” imparting his unique personal experience and inside knowledge of the game to listeners. By all reports, Stark was a popular broadcaster, but a change in sponsors after the 1936 season meant he had to put the blue suit back on.
Stark’s return to umpiring lasted just until 1940 when he injured his knee. He attempted a comeback in 1942 but reinjured the knee in spring training. Again, the connections Stark made over his career served him well. He worked as recreation director for an aircraft plant and did some scouting for the New York Giants. And while recreation director and scout were the kinds of jobs one would expect an aging baseball man to have, Stark’s next venture was out of left field.
ALWAYS KNOWN as a dapper man and impeccable dresser, Dolly Stark next took on the fashion world. Partnering with L. Neuberger & Company, the former umpire founded “Dolly Stark Fashions” in 1945. He introduced a lady’s sun dress pattern called the “Dolly Stark Dress” that became quite popular in the immediate post war period.
The old arbiter settled down and began dating Boston socialite Betsy Levy in 1952. A week before the couple were to wed, Stark’s sister Frances, who long suffered from health and mental issues, committed suicide. The marriage didn’t fare any better, ending in divorce four years later.
Though Stark no longer had to support his mother (she passed away in 1940) and sister, his savings were all but gone. He tried several different jobs, from stocks and bonds trader to salesman for a brass plaque engraving company. He even had his own sports news and interview show on CBS called, Your Sports Special. Considering the wide array of talents Stark possessed, it’s not surprising that in 1956 he was reported to be working on a Broadway comedy about baseball.
Despite conquering the worlds of Wall Street, engraved plaque sales, radio and television broadcasting, and ready to wear ladies’ fashion, Dolly was never able to return to his one true love: baseball. Repeated attempts to find any baseball work in any capacity was met by silence. As he grew older, Stark fell on hard times, and he needed to rely on unemployment benefits as he reached his sixties. Despite being turned away by the game he loved, Dolly Stark remained a baseball fan. He was watching the Yankees-Tigers game on TV at a friend’s Manhattan apartment when he died of a heart attack on August 24, 1968. He was 71.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I’m not sure there’ll ever be a more talented, inventive, and intellectually diverse umpire than Dolly Stark. Besides being the first Jewish umpire in the majors, Stark’s innovative approach to his craft changed the way umpires had previously worked a game. And to do that while maintaining a wildly popular reputation with the players and fans speaks to the unique character of this Renaissance man in blue.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This story is Number 76 in a series of collectible booklets
Each of the hand-numbered and signed 4 ¼” x 5 1/2″ booklets feature an 8 to 24 page story along with a colored art card attached to the inside back cover. These mini-books can be bought individually, thematically or collected as a never-ending set. In addition to the individual booklets, I envision there being themed sets, such as the series I did on Minor League Home Run Champions. You can order a Subscription to Season 6 as well. A year subscription includes a guaranteed regular 12 issues at a discounted price, plus at least one extra Subscriber Special Issue. Each subscription will begin with Booklet Number 066 and will be active through December of 2024. Booklets 1-65 can be purchased as a group, too.