Stark Despair

Albert D. ("Dolly") Stark was born on Manhattan's lower East Side, son of a second-hand clothes dealer who never had enough spare stock to supply his son with a coat to match his trousers. Small Stark envied the boy who lived across the street, whose name was Walter Winchell, and who owned a Buster Brown suit of blue serge. When he grew up Dolly Stark became a professional baseball player. He gave it up in 1921, went to Dartmouth as basketball coach three years later, kept up his interest in baseball by umpiring summers. In 1927, he became a professional umpire in the Eastern League, succeeded well enough for the National League to send a scout to watch his work. The scout's report was so enthusiastic that Dolly Stark was invited to join the National League's umpire staff the following year. He has been on it ever since, in neatly pressed blue serge.

Umpires, like thieves and executioners, lead extrasocial lives. In public, they are customarily hated by the players whose doings they adjudicate, scorned by the crowds who watch them. In private, they follow the same itinerary as baseball players but travel on different trains, stop at different hotels. To relieve the opprobrium of their calling, which takes only six months of every year, most umpires follow more gregarious sidelines in the winter. Umpire Ernest Quigley, a National League veteran of 22 years, has a hog ranch in Kansas. Until recently, he also taught English history and mathematics at St. Mary's College in Kansas. Umpire Charles Moran was football coach at Centre College, developed famed "Bo" McMillin. Umpire "Beans" Reardon, famed for his raucous voice, is a Hollywood bit-part actor. Umpire George Barr is professor of umpiring at the Doan School of Baseball at Hot Springs, Ark. Umpire Bill Klem, dean of his profession at 62 and long past the length of service at which National League umpires are eligible for a $2,000 yearly pension, does nothing in the winter. He thinks he has never made a wrong decision in 33 years on the field. Among his colleagues, Dolly Stark has been distinguished for a variety of reasons. While continuing to coach basketball at Dartmouth, where a majority of under graduates prefer outdoor winter sports, he has worked himself up as an umpire until last season his salary was $9,000, almost as big as Klem's. Voting by players for a favorite umpire was a mockery until Stark won by large majorities in 1934 and 1935. Players like him because he is fast, industrious, accurate. In a profession which usually makes popularity unthink able, he achieved another unprecedented triumph last summer when New York fans presented him with an automobile as a token of esteem. That an automobile, admiration from players and spectators, a blue serge suit and $9,000 a year are still for Dolly Stark inadequate compensations for being an umpire became apparent last week. Appropriating a privilege hitherto reserved for baseball players who consider themselves underpaid, he refused to sign a 1936 contract, announced that he was "holding out" for more money. Said he : "The highest praise [umpires] receive is silence. When a man does good work under these circumstances -- and I consider umpiring an art -- I think he should command a good salary. ... If I can't get more, I am ready to try something else. . . ."

Said National League President Ford Frick: "His job will be waiting for him in 1937. . . ."

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