Abe Stark

This article is #1 in a series of three about the Brooklyn clothier-turned-politician and his iconic sign that adorned the right field fence in Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. It remains perhaps the most famous ballpark sign in baseball history.

This article is a biography, focusing on Abe Stark’s life and achievements. For a history of the sign, the batters who actually hit it, and insight into why it remains iconic decades after Ebbets Field was razed, click here. For a history of other ballpark signs that offered prizes to fans, click here.

“Hit Sign. Win Suit. Abe Stark. 1514 Pitkin Ave. Brooklyn’s Leading Clothier.”

From 1931 until the Dodgers’ last game in Ebbets Field in 1957, that sign – located below the scoreboard in right field – was visible to everyone at the ballpark, to those who watched games on TV, and to those who read in the daily newspapers whether any players managed to actually hit the sign and win a free suit of clothes. The visibility of that sign brought customers to Abe Stark’s men’s clothing store. He parlayed his name recognition into a political career. In 1953 he was elected president of the New York City Council and was re-elected four years later. Beginning in 1961, Brooklyn voters elected him borough president three times.

Books about the Brooklyn Dodgers and memoirs of people who grew up in the borough recall the sign with a sense of nostalgia or heartbreak.1 It was the subject of a famous New Yorker cartoon in 1938 by George Price.2 It was satirized by a Bugs Bunny cartoon in 1956.3 The sign is in the background of Norman Rockwell’s famous 1948 painting, “The Three Umpires,” which was on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on April 23, 1949. In The Great American Novel (1973), Philip Roth created a character, Abe Ellis, based on Stark.4

But who was the real Abe Stark?

Abraham Irving Stark was born on September 28, 1894, to Herman and Sara Stark, poor Russian Jewish immigrants who lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Abe was the third of their five children.5 In 1900, when he was six years old, the family moved to the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, when the area was not yet a bustling urban enclave.6

Stark’s father was a tailor who struggled to make a living. Starting at six, Abe Stark worked as a newsboy to help support the family. He also sold lemonade at local amateur baseball games.7 By the time he was 11, the family’s finances had plunged so low that he had to drop out of school after the seventh grade (at P.S. 109) to increase his hours selling newspapers. He was also a vendor at Ebbets Field.8 He learned tailoring skills while working in a Brooklyn clothing store as a handy boy for $2.50 a week.

In 1914, the 20-year-old Stark opened a men’s clothing store with two other young men. The following year he opened his own store on Pitkin Avenue in Brownsville, then a predominantly Jewish working-class neighborhood.

Brooklyn was growing quickly. By 1930, it was New York’s most populous borough, with 2.56 million residents – 37% of all New Yorkers.9 If it was its own city, it would have been the third largest in the country, after New York and Chicago, a ranking that continued through 1950.10

Brooklyn had a large population of Jewish immigrants and their children. Its Jewish community had thousands of organizations – synagogues, labor unions, charity groups, social service agencies, social clubs, tenants associations, youth groups, Jewish schools, hospitals, women’s groups, left-wing (socialist, anarchist, burial societies, Communist) groups,11 and others. The languages spoken on the streets and in homes were English and Yiddish.

Stark was gregarious and actively involved in many social, business, and charitable organizations. In 1910, at age 15, he was elected president of the Iroquois Social Club.12 In 1914, he was on the board of the Utopian Club.13 In 1920, he was part of another social club, the Boys from Herman’s, that sponsored musical and theater events, including dances.14 He was also a member of the Kings County Square Club, which raised money for local charities.15 In 1928, Stark was elected to the board of the Nonpareil Social and Athletic Club, another Brooklyn group.16 That year, Stark was part of the group’s Matzoh Fund Committee that raised $10,000 ($188,632 in 2025 dollars) to distribute 1,500 baskets of matzoh and other foods to the needy for the Passover holiday.17

One of Stark’s two most enduring involvements was the Pitkin Avenue Merchants Association, which began around 1917. By 1933, he was its president.18 The Merchants Association distributed food to needy Brooklyn families, encouraged consumers to shop in the area, and pushed City Hall to improve sanitation, garbage collection, and bus service in the neighborhood.19 Soon after Franklin Roosevelt became president in 1933, the business group pressured the New York City Council to apply for $1.5 million in New Deal funds to eradicate slums in Brownsville.20

During the Depression, when many Brooklynites were out of work, Stark hired jobless tailors – for a day, or a week, or longer – even if there wasn’t much work for them to do. According to Murray Rubin, whose father worked in the store, Stark “knew that it was important psychologically for someone to have some money coming in, even if it was only a little bit. It’s just the way he was. He cared about people.”21

Throughout his life, before and during his political career, Stark was a generous philanthropist and civic do-gooder. He donated to and raised money for a wide range of charities and causes. He created his own family foundation. As a community leader, he pushed to get Brownsville better public services – transportation, schools, parks, playgrounds, and housing.

According to Alter Landesman’s history of Brownsville, Stark’s store “came to have the reputation of a political and social welfare office to which hundreds, regardless of political party, race or color, came with requests for help.”22

Stark’s instinct for charity came from his family. He recalled that they always had boxes distributed by different charities – called “puschkas” – in their apartment. “Every month or so somebody’d come around and empty them. Well, my mother and father would put coins in the puschkas, even when it meant having less food.”23

These civic improvement and charitable activities were routinely covered in local newspapers – especially the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the New York Daily News – both well-read in Brooklyn. Most stories mentioned Stark as the leader. An article in the Brooklyn Eagle, headlined “Abe’d Go Stark Mad If He Couldn’t Aid Poor,” reflected his public reputation.24

Stark was a liberal, not a radical, but he recognized that during the Depression Brooklyn was a hotbed of left-wing activism, especially within the Jewish community. As a smart businessman, he knew that even Communists bought suits. So he advertised in the Communist Party’s newspaper, The Daily Worker, deploying a left-wing twist. The ad said: “Abe Stark. Recognized Union Shop. Catering to the masses.”25

Stark’s other major affiliation was with the Brownsville Boys Club.

By 1930, Brownsville was Brooklyn’s most densely populated neighborhood, with nearly a quarter of a million people.26 It was also one of New York City’s poorest areas, with Jews accounting for about 80% of its population. The area was dotted with small-scale factories and different shopping areas.27 During the Depression, the proportion of unemployed workers and families on relief in Brownsville was among the highest in the city. Its tenement housing was congested, unsafe, and unhealthy. It had a high crime rate and more than its share of mobsters.

It was also New York City’s most radical area.28 During the 1920s and 1930s, Brownsville voters elected candidates from the Socialist Party (during the 1910s) and (during the 1930s) the American Labor Party (closely tied to the Communist Party) to the state legislature and gave many votes to Socialist candidates for mayor and city council.29

Brownsville’s lack of playgrounds, school yards, baseball fields, basketball courts, gyms, and recreation centers meant that for youngsters, especially teenagers, much of their leisure activities involved hanging out on stoops and playing games in the streets. The police, educators, and social workers worried that the absence of recreational facilities encouraged juvenile delinquency and crime.30

A remarkable cohort of local teenage boys mobilized a grassroots campaign, including a petition drive (signed by over a thousand boys), to persuade the school board and other city officials to provide facilities for teenage activities. They called themselves the Brownsville Boys Club (BBC). As their reputation grew, they won other benefits – free tickets to Dodgers games, free admission to museums, movies, and concerts, athletic equipment and uniforms, and a week or two at a summer camp outside the crowded city run by settlement houses and other nonprofit agencies, as historian Gerald Sorin recounted in his history of the BBC.31

In 1946, Stark took it upon himself to build on this momentum. He became the BBC’s major advocate and fundraiser. Even before he ran for political office, he was so widely respected that he could draw upon his networks to raise money for the cause. In 1947, for example, 1,500 people attended a $100-a-plate fundraiser for the BBC that honored Stark.32 He was not the BBC’s founder, but many New Yorkers and newspapers identified him that way.33

Under his leadership, the BBC expanded its charitable efforts beyond the boys who comprised the core members. In 1951, for example, the BBC sponsored its annual Christmas-Hannukah party, held at the 106th Regiment Armory, and distributed food to 10,000 children. The food was donated by local restaurants, prepared by the Cooks’ and Countermen’s Union, and served by members of the Waiters’ Union, all for free. The Fire Department band provided music, and the Police Department glee club performed. Local merchants contributed bags of toys, clothes, shoeshine kits, candy, and comic books. The New York Times account reported that Stark gave a speech, and that Clarabell (the clown on the popular “Howdy Doody” TV show) and well-known comedian Sam Levenson were among the entertainers.34

In 1946, Stark incorporated the club and recruited local lawyers, businessmen, and bankers to serve on its board, along with several BBC alumni in their early 20s, with Stark as board chairman. Two years later, the BBC utilized Stark’s connections to purchase, at nominal cost, an entire block of tax-liened property on Linden Boulevard from the city. Stark led a successful campaign to raise $1.5 million (the equivalent of $20 million in 2025 dollars) to construct a new building and pay the staff.35

The facility on Linden Boulevard – which included a gym, swimming pool, an auditorium for 1,000 people, woodworking and machine shops, a photography studio, a library, several outdoor playgrounds, a kitchen, office space, and club rooms – opened in September 1953. At the opening, a civic leader called it a “living monument to Abe Stark.”36 Two months later, Stark was elected president of the New York City Council, garnering more votes than any citywide candidate, including Robert Wagner, who was elected mayor.

In addition to the board and the members, the BBC had many volunteers who helped set up field trips, worked at BBC’s summer camp, organized fundraisers, and connected the BBC to other organizations. By 1954, the BBC had 6,000 members. More than one-quarter (28%) of them were girls, who had been allowed to join starting in 1950.37

Many of these activities were organized by Minnie Weingart, whom Stark hired in 1949 as the BBC’s volunteer coordinator. She had a wide network of contacts in the community and was often described as the “Angel of Brownsville.”38 She operated out of an office on the mezzanine level of Stark’s store and became Stark’s political assistant in addition to her BBC job.39

With funds raised by Stark, the board hired BBC alumni – many, by then, veterans of World War II – as staff, often while they attended college on the GI Bill. They served as coaches, counselors, camp staff, and social workers. The leftist and social welfare orientation of BBC’s staff – reflecting the views of the social work profession, especially in New York – encouraged members to engage in social justice activities.

The BBC’s young leaders appreciated Stark’s efforts on their behalf and even worked on his political campaigns, but some of them resented the BBC’s shift from a mutual-aid group led by teens to a formal social agency with adult staff. “We tried to maintain self-government,” said Jack Leavitt, one of the youth leaders. At a BBC board meeting, he said, “We want your money, but we don’t want to be controlled.”40

Over the years – long before and after he was elected to public office – hundreds of civic, Jewish, labor, civil rights, and youth organizations honored Stark as “Man of the Year” and gave other testimonials for his efforts to improve the community, particularly his work on behalf of underprivileged children, his humanitarian efforts, his outspoken opposition to racial and anti-Semitic bigotry, and his support for Israel, including hosting an annual (starting in 1949) celebrity-filled “Music Under the Stars” concert at Ebbets Field to raise money for the new Jewish state.41

The Ebbets Field scoreboard, shown here during the 1949 World Series, displayed Abe Stark’s “hit sign, win suit” sign from 1931 to 1957. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

Stark’s Political Career

Stark entered politics in the early 1930s, around the same time he erected his sign at Ebbets Field. In 1931, he managed George Blumberg’s successful campaign for state senator.42 In 1933, local activists urged Stark to run for a city council seat from Brooklyn, but he declined. Instead, he briefly became a leader of the Democratic Party organization in the 23rd Assembly District in Brownsville.43 In that voluntary position, he helped manage and raise money for other candidates.

With that experience, in 1945 Stark became the Brooklyn campaign manager for Brooklyn District Attorney William O’Dwyer’s successful bid for mayor. He hoped that O’Dwyer would translate his campaign promises about schools, housing, and recreation facilities into specific improvements in Brooklyn. In November 1948, Mayor O’Dwyer appointed Stark Commissioner of Commerce at a salary of $1 a year. The job was largely ceremonial. Stark resigned a few months later after O’Dwyer, at the behest of Stark’s political rival, Brooklyn borough president John Cashmore, denied his requests for a real budget of $500,000 to encourage new businesses and jobs to locate in New York by means of TV radio, and film promotional broadcasts. Stark was also upset that city officials had installed several staffpersons in his department without his knowledge.44

Stark had long been a Democrat, but when he was denied the party’s endorsement for Brooklyn borough president in 1949, he decided to run against Cashmore, the Democratic incumbent, as a fusion candidate on both the Liberal Party and the Republican Party lines. His campaign was always a long shot, given the borough’s strong Democratic leanings. Cashmore defeated him by a vote of 427,298 to 349,760, and Stark returned to his business, civic, and philanthropic activities. But he had demonstrated his vote-getting ability,45 laying the groundwork for another run for office.

In 1953, Stark returned to the Democratic fold, winning a race for president of the city council on a ticket headed by the Manhattan Borough President, Robert F. Wagner, Jr., who was elected mayor. Stark received more city-wide votes than any other candidate, including Wagner – in part because Stark was so popular in Brooklyn, the borough which had the city’s largest population. At a time when the Democrats liked ethnic balance on their tickets46 and Jews comprised the largest ethnic group in Brooklyn, Stark was a champion vote-getter. Many members and alumni of the Brownsville Boys Club worked on Stark’s campaign. In fact, they held a victory celebration and swearing-in ceremony for him at the new BBC building.47

In early 1954 – not long after the new building opened and Stark was sworn in as City Council president – he fired many of the BBC’s professional staff. Historian Gerald Sorin observed that “The Brownsville Boys Club had become less and less useful to Stark’s political ambitions.”48 Possibly Stark believed that the BBC’s staff had gone far beyond the original “keep the kids off the streets and out of trouble” mission and into community organizing.49 But in the midst of the Cold War and the Red Scare, Stark may also have been concerned that many of BBC’s professional staff were socialists or even Communists. It is likely that he worried that this could hinder his ability to raise funds for the BBC’s $185,000 operating budget ($2.2 million in 2025 dollars) from local businessmen. Stark may also have considered any association with leftists as a liability to his political aspirations, which included eventually becoming New York City mayor.

In September 1954, Stark claimed that the BBC was almost bankrupt and arranged for the BBC board to transfer its building and operation to the City of New York Parks Department.50 In fact, the BBC was not bankrupt. Its board members and major supporters continued to donate funds to other nonprofit organizations in the area. Stark’s other claim – that the transfer was a “gift” to the city to encourage it to open other youth centers in other low-income neighborhoods – should also be taken with a grain of salt.51 Stark’s abandoning the BBC seems a self-serving, calculating, even hypocritical, move.

Given Stark’s twice winning citywide election for president of the city council by wide margins, many Democratic Party leaders were wary of his ambitions to run for mayor. In 1956, they were concerned that if Mayor Wagner won his ongoing race for a U.S. Senate seat, city council president Stark would finish out Wagner’s mayoral term, making be difficult to deny him the party’s nomination in 1957. Party insiders also feared that, even if he could win the race, Stark, a seventh-grade dropout,  was not prepared to run the nation’s largest and most complex city.52 But Wagner lost his Senate race and was subsequently reelected mayor two more times, thwarting Stark’s ambitions.

In 1957 Stark was reelected city council president with 67% of the citywide vote.53

Despite Stark’s popularity, in 1961 Mayor Wagner, with the support of party power brokers, denied Stark another term as city council president.54 Instead, he became the party candidate for Brooklyn borough president and was elected with 56% of the vote in a three-way race against both  Republican and Liberal Party opponents.55 Four years later, in a four-way contest (including Republican, Liberal, and Conservative Party candidates), Stark garnered 60% of the vote to win re-election.56 And in 1969, he won the position a third time with 67% of the vote.57 But he served only briefly, resigning for health reasons in August 1970.

Although he often highlighted his experience as a successful businessman, Stark was a liberal Democrat, attuned with his political base in Brooklyn and New York’s civic culture. As a civic-minded businessman, as a philanthropist, and during his 17 years in public office, Stark was constantly in the news – at ribbon-cutting ceremonies, at fundraisers for various causes, at testimonial dinners and other events with politicians, sports figures, celebrities like opera star Marian Anderson, and even beauty contest winners like the “Watermelon Queen.” His advocacy for youth, schools, decent housing, and Israel also generated headlines.

Amidst growing hysteria over juvenile delinquency and gangs in the late 1950s, Stark challenged the conservative approach of repression by police and courts, and was appalled by the suggestions of a local judge to restrict immigration from Puerto Rico and to limit migration of Black Americans from the South to northern cities. Instead, he called on the federal and state governments to fund more recreation programs and boys’ clubs and orchestrated a meeting at City Hall to discuss how to “smooth the adjustment” of minority groups into American culture.58

Stark initiated another public storm in 1959 when Ralph Bunche, the Nobel Prize-winning African American diplomat, disclosed that he had been denied membership to the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, the site of that year’s Davis Cup tournament. Stark – who was serving as Acting Mayor while Mayor Wagner was out of town – could have ignored the situation. Instead, he called on the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association to withdraw the tournament from that club unless it ended its discriminatory policy toward Blacks and Jews. He also urged the city’s License Department to investigate why the West Side Tennis Club was operating without a license – although the club insisted that it didn’t need one. Stark further related that he had arranged with the owner of vacant Ebbets Field – the former home of the Dodgers – to host the tennis tournament for free and proposed having the city provide free tickets for 10,000 underprivileged children to attend the tournament. He even arranged free transportation with a private bus company.59 Stark mobilized other leaders – including Jackie Robinson, Roy Wilkins (executive secretary  of the NAACP), Mayor Wagner, and members of Congress — to join in opposing the all-white, all-Christian tennis establishment, drawing national attention to the controversy.60 The negative publicity forced the club’s president to resign, and eventually, the club reversed its discriminatory policies.

In 1962, Stark sparked another controversy when he urged judges to put slumlords in jail, arguing that the imposition of meager fines they were assessed had not pressured many of them into fixing up their buildings. He not only pushed for more public housing for the very poor, but also for more limited-profit housing for working class families.61

Stark and the Dodgers

Many New Yorkers, especially Brooklynites, had strong emotional ties with the Dodgers. No New York politician was more closely identified with the Dodgers, or had a greater stake in keeping the team in Brooklyn, than Abe Stark, whose Ebbets Field sign had made him famous and launched his political career. Although he was New York City Council President when the Dodgers left Brooklyn, he escaped blame for the team’s departure. In fact, in November 1957 – just a month after the close of the Dodgers’ final season in Brooklyn – New Yorkers reelected Stark as president of the city council with 67% of the vote.62 Brooklyn voters elected him borough president in 1961, 1965, and 1969 by wide margins.

Brooklyn residents felt betrayed by Walter O’Malley, the club owner who orchestrated the team move to Los Angeles. Many baseball fans and sportswriters also blamed New York urban planning czar Robert Moses, who was in some ways more powerful than the mayor and city council.63

On August 16, 1955, O’Malley surprised Dodger fans by announcing that the team would be abandoning Ebbets Field in the very near future. In the meantime, the Dodgers would play seven of their 77 “home” games at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City the following season. O’Malley wanted to have a new Brooklyn stadium ready for the 1958 season, and if that didn’t happen, “Our days at Ebbets Field are numbered,” he warned.64

Despite the Dodgers’ pennant-winning seasons in 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955, and 1956, attendance at Ebbets Field fell from its peak of 1.8 million in 1947 to 1.03 million in 1955, when the Dodgers won their first World Series.65 Thereafter, O’Malley engaged in discussions with New York City politicians, hoping to get the city to help him build a new ballpark in downtown Brooklyn that would have more seating and more parking than Ebbets Field. He also worried that whites departing for the suburbs in ever-growing numbers would not travel to the increasingly Black neighborhood where Ebbets Field was located. What O’Malley therefore wanted was a new ballpark in a whiter and more middle-class area that would attract a “better class of fans.”66 Dodgers executive Fresco Thompson chimed in that “the loyal and substantial fan, the family man, had moved away [from Brooklyn]. He was replaced by the undesirables.”67

City planning czar  Moses wanted the Dodgers to move to Flushing Meadows in Queens and thwarted O’Malley’s desire to relocate in downtown Brooklyn. Although O’Malley pledged to finance the new stadium without city subsidies, in fact the downtown Brooklyn site would have been very expensive for the taxpayers. The city would have to use its eminent domain powers to acquire designated properties – occupied by the Fort Greene meat market and the Long Island Rail Road terminal – and then sell those properties to O’Malley for much less than the acquisition price. The city would also have to pay for relocating both the meat market and the terminal, in addition to building new parking garages and improving traffic circulation in the area. All this, Moses estimated, would cost about $20 million.68

O’Malley was frustrated that the city political establishment wouldn’t give him what he wanted and soon began negotiating with city officials in Los Angeles to move the team there. Many fans and even sportswriters believed that O’Malley was bluffing. There was no major league team on the West Coast and the Dodgers had long been intimately identified with Brooklyn. Indeed, to many people Brooklyn without the Dodgers was unimaginable.

Stark was unsupportive of O’Malley’s plans. In 1957 he told a Congressional committee that “Dodger management has maintained a cold war of silence and evasion toward the people of New York while engaging in a warm flirtation with the mayors of the Pacific coast. … What sort of Frankenstein monster are we creating which today can reach out and threaten the right of the people of New York to watch their own baseball teams?” Referring to O’Malley’s plan to relocate a ballpark in downtown Brooklyn, Stark said that he “strongly felt that it didn’t belong there because it was in the heart of the business area, the housing and the market place of Brooklyn, as well as for many other reasons” and that he had “no intention of voting for large sums of public money” to keep the Dodgers from leaving  Brooklyn.69

Despite his hostility to the O’Malley proposals, Stark understood that he needed to be publicly involved with efforts to keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn. He generated headlines by proposing two alternatives to the downtown Brooklyn site. One involved building a stadium on the Parade Ground, a city-owned site near Prospect Park in central Brooklyn. Both O’Malley and Moses opposed the idea, making it a non-starter politically. Then Stark offered another plan – to renovate Ebbets Field on its existing site, expanding the seating capacity to 50,000 seats and with  5,000 parking spaces, and “cleaning up” the neighborhood surrounding the ballpark. O’Malley responded: “Mr. Stark continues to add confusion to what would have been a simple solution.”70

In reality, there was no simple solution – certainly, none that was politically and financially realistic. By the time the New York politicians and the fledging “Keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn” grassroots group realized that O’Malley wasn’t bluffing, it was too late. O’Malley persuaded New York Giants owner Horace Stoneham, who was already considering moving his club to Minneapolis where it operated a minor league franchise, to continue the two teams’ historic rivalry by joining the Dodgers in the move to the West Coast. Having National League clubs in both Los Angeles and San Francisco also made it more cost-effective for the NL’s other ballclubs to travel to the two cities.

Stark’s Legacy

When the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles for the 1958 season, Brooklyn was already undergoing a dramatic transformation. Brooklynites were moving out of the borough to Queens and to the New York and New Jersey suburbs. In particular, white residents were leaving, while Black and Puerto Rican newcomers were moving in. The borough’s major daily newspaper, the Brooklyn Eagle, which had started in 1841 and helped give Brooklynites a strong common identity, stopped publishing in 1955. By the late 1950s, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which had once employed 70,000 workers to build ships during World War II, had declined to about 10,000 workers, and by 1966 it was deactivated as a military installation.71 The dense network of non-profit civic, labor, Jewish, charity, and social organizations that was Stark’s base, was declining in number and members. Ebbets Field, which had housed the Dodgers since 1913, was sold to a developer, and demolished in 1960, replaced by an apartment complex. Stark closed his store in 1959. The present whereabouts of the “Hit Sign, Win Suit” sign are unknown. The sign is partly visible in photos of the ballpark’s demolition; one may surmise that it was too big to become one of the many artifacts that were sold.

In June 1970, Stark suffered a stroke. The next month, his wife of 53 years, Lilyan (née Goldman) died. That September, in the first year of his third term as borough president, Stark was living in a New York nursing home, and resigned his position, explaining that he wanted “some rest and solitude.”72 He moved to a nursing home in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he died of heart failure on July 2, 1972. He was buried in Mount Carmel Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery located in Glendale, Queens. Stark and his wife had one son, Stanley, who became a physician, and three grandchildren – identical twins Wileen and Sharon, and Michael.

There are many tangible legacies of Stark’s philanthropy and his stature as a public figure. His name adorns many public and nonprofit buildings in Brooklyn, including the Abe Stark Skating Rink (now called the Abe Stark Sports Center), the Abe Stark Older Adult Center, and Abe Stark Elementary School. There’s also the Abe Stark House of the Hillel Foundation, an organization for Jewish students at Brooklyn College, which in the 1950s and 1960s had one of the largest Jewish enrollments among U.S. colleges.

Stark’s sign was not the first or the last to adorn a ballpark, as described in Part 3 of this series, but it was certainly the most famous. Stark’s “Hit Sign, Win Suit” will forever be part of baseball history.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the following people for their help with this research project: Sylvia Chico, Keith Crook, Charles Eubanks, Peter Golenbock, Alice Griffin of the Center for Brooklyn History, Marianne LaBatto of the Brooklyn College archives, Jack Leavitt, Cassidy Lent of the Baseball Hall of Fame library and research center, Bob McGee, Brian Merlis of Brooklyn Pix, Pauline Toole, Ken Cobb, and Hanan Ohayon of the New York City Department of Records and Information Services, Kristin Peace of the Occidental College Library, Gerald Sorin, Amy Surak of the Manhattan University archives, Izzy Wang, and John Zinn.

This biography was reviewed by Rory Costello and Bill Lamb and fact-checked by Larry DeFillipo.

Photo credit: Abe Stark, Jewish Daily Forward, November 6, 1949.

Notes

1 For their book about Ebbets Field, John Zinn and Paul Zinn interviewed Sam Bernstein, who recalled attending Dodgers games with his father, who said “The smartest man was that Abe Stark, because of that sign, ‘Hit Sign, Win Suit.” It was under the scoreboard, and it was hard to hit.” His father also recalled: “I never shopped there because he was too expensive.” John G. Zinn and Paul G. Zinn, editors, Ebbets Field: Essays and Memories of Brooklyn’s Historic Ballpark, 1913-1960 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2013), 180. For his book Bums, Peter Golenbock interviewed a Dodgers fan named Bobby McCarthy, who had similar memories of going to Ebbets Field with his father. McCarthy also recalled the Stark sign, pointing out that the sign was difficult to hit and made even harder because “the right fielder was stationed right in front of it.” Peter Golenbock, Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 2000), 8.

2 Price was a frequent cartoon contributor to The New Yorker. See Lee Lorenz, “George Price,” New Yorker, January 30, 1995. Some claim that the cartoon includes elements of anti-Semitism by depicting a Jewish businessperson as stingy and conniving, both well-worn stereotypes about Jews.

3 This cartoon was syndicated in many newspapers around the country on August 14, 1956, including many far from Brooklyn, such as the Great Falls (Montana) Leader.

4 Frank Ardolino, “’Hit Sign, Win Suit’: Abraham, Isaac, and the Schwabs Living over the Scoreboard in Roth’s ‘The Great American Novel,’’’ Studies in American Jewish Literature, Vol. 8, No. 2, Fall 1989,  219-223.

5 His parents’ names are listed on Stark’s 1919 marriage license.

6 Murray Illson, “Abe Stark of Brooklyn, Who Led City Council, Dies,” New York Times, July 4, 1972: 20; “For President of the City Council – Abe Stark,” New York Age, September 12, 1953: 12; “Political Insider — Abe Stark,” New York Times, September 29, 1960: 12; John Scullin Jr., “Abe Stark Keeps His People in Mind,” Staten Island Advance, January 21, 1968: 13; Gerald Sorin, The Nurturing Neighborhood: The Brownsville Boys Club and Jewish Community in Urban America, 1940-1990 (New York: New York University Press, 1990); Marc Linder and Lawrence S. Zacharias, Of Cabbages and Kings County (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999); Alter Landesman, Brownsville: The Birth, Development and Passing of a Jewish Community in New York (New York: Bloch Publishing, 1971).

7 Jerry King, “Stark Once Sold Lemonade, Now Puts Squeeze on Dems,” New York World Telegram, October 18, 1949; Mary Braggiotti, “Harmony Under the Stars in the Dodgers Lair: Close-up of Abe Stark,” New York Post, June 6, 1949: 33.

8 Sorin, The Nurturing Neighborhood, 121.

9 https://www.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/data-maps/nyc-population/historical-population/nyc_total_pop_1900-2010.pdf

10 Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places: 1930, U.S. Census https://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/1998/demographics/pop-twps0027/tab16.txt; 1950 Census of Population, U.S. Census

https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1950/pc-03/pc-3-06.pdf

11 See the chapter “Radical and Social Reform Movements” in Landesman, Brownsville, above.

12 “Iroquois Social Club Arranges June Ramble,” Brooklyn Standard Union, June 4, 1910: 9.

13 “Utopian Club Ball Attracts Big Crowd,” Brooklyn Standard Union, February 2, 1914: 6.

14 “In The Social World,” Brooklyn  Standard Union, February 24, 1920: 11.

15 “Square Club Gives All Funds of Dance to the Charities of Brooklyn,” Brooklyn Chat, April 30, 1927: 103.

16 “Nonpareil Club Holds Annual Election,” Brooklyn Chat, January 7, 1928: 12.

17 “1,500 Food Baskets at Nonpareil Club,” Brooklyn Times, March 25, 1928: 4.

18 “Stark Elected Head of Pitkin Merchants,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 19, 1933: 4.

19 “Merchants Discuss Ambitious Schedule of Brownsville Plans,” Brooklyn Standard Union, September 27, 1925: 2-8.

20 Edward T. O’Loughlin, “O’Loughlin’s Column: Merchants Hope for Success in Drive to Get $1,500,000 to Erase Brownsville Slums,” Brooklyn Times Union, June 21, 1934: 12A.

21 Bob McGee, The Greatest Ballpark Ever: Ebbets Field and the Story of the Brooklyn Dodgers (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 112.

22 Landesman, Brownsville, 341.

23 Braggiotti, “Harmony Under the Stars” above.

24 Jane Corby, “Abe’d Go Stark Mad If He Couldn’t Aid Poor,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 29, 1946: 6.

25 Abe Stark ad in the (New York) Daily Worker, November 15, 1934.

26 Sorin, The Nurturing Neighborhood, 17; https://www.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/data-maps/nyc-population/historical-population/nyc_total_pop_1900-2010.pdf

27 Sorin, The Nurturing Neighborhood, 12.

28 Sorin, The Nurturing Neighborhood, 27; Landesman, Brownsville, 103-145; Ronald Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict: The Irish, Germans, Jews, and Italians of New York City, 1929-1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).

29 Wendell E. Pritchett, Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

30 Sorin, The Nurturing Neighborhood, 26-34.

31 Sorin, The Nurturing Neighborhood, 35-41.

32 “Boys Club Drive Closes at Dinner,” New York Times, November 24, 1947: 17.

33 In a 1949 article, the New York Post claimed that Stark “organized it [the BBC] two years ago” and quoted Stark saying “Since we started the club…” See Braggiotti, “Harmony Under the Stars,” above.

34 “Brownsville Club Entertains 10,000,” New York Times, December 28, 1951: 27.

35 “1,000 Honor Stark at Testimonial Dinner,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 25, 1953: 2. Accounts differ over whether the new building cost $1 million or $1.5 million, but all of them credit Stark with spearheading the fundraising campaign.

36 “Brownsville Boys Club Opens Deluxe $1,500,000 Building,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 14, 1953: 7.

37 Cecil Johnson, “Happenings of Interest Around and About the Borough,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 20, 1949: 3; Lyn Fernbach, “Brownsville Boys Club ’40 Dream Comes True,” New York Herald Tribune, January 29, 1954: 17.

38 Sorin, The Nurturing Neighborhood, 129-133.

39 Sorin, The Nurturing Neighborhood, 129.

40 Sorin, The Nurturing Neighborhood, 134.

41 See, e.g., “Brownsville Businessman Lauded for Contributions,” New York Amsterdam News, February 21, 1948.

42 “Blumberg Visions Hastings Needing Many References,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 31, 1932: 32.

43 “Abe Stark Upheld in Fight to Retain Vote in 23d A.D.,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 13, 1936: 1.

44 “Stark Launches Drive to ‘Sell’ City to Residents and Outsiders,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 9, 1949: 17;   “Abe Stark Resigns Commerce Dept. Job,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 14, 1949: 2;  Dominick Peluso, “Stark Resigns $1-a-Year City Commerce Job,” New York Daily News, April 14, 1949: 289;  Dominick Peluso, “Stark Leaves With a Slap at Cashmore,” New York Daily News, April 23, 1949: 20. O’Dwyer resigned from office in August 1950 as a result of a police corruption scandal uncovered by his successor as Brooklyn district attorney. Despite this, President Harry Truman appointed O’Dwyer as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico.

45 “Abe Stark Shifts to Pecora’s Side,” New York Times, October 19, 1950: 36.

46 In 1953, for example, the Democratic Party ticket included Robert Wagner for mayor (German-Irish), Lawrence Gerosa for comptroller (Italian), Hulan Jack for Manhattan borough president (Black), and Stark for city council president (Jewish). “Winning Team,” (Hempstead, New York) Newsday, November 4, 1953: 2.

47 “Stark Sworn Again at Boys Club Fete,” New York Times, January 2, 1954: 7.

48 Sorin, The Nurturing Neighborhood, 150; Charles Walling, “Boys Club Funds Dip, Staff Cut,” New York Daily News, March 17, 1954: 89.

49 Sorin, The Nurturing Neighborhood, 147-150.

50 Robert C. Boardman, “Boys Club in Brownsville Given to City to Aid Youth,” New York Herald-Tribune, August 27, 1954; “Boys Club Turned Over to City,” New York Amsterdam News, September 25, 1954: 21.

51 Sorin, The Nurturing Neighborhood, 151.

52 “Political Insider – Abe Stark,” above.

53 “Wagner Re-elected by Biggest Margin in N.Y. History,” Buffalo News, November 6, 1957: 1, 3; Nancy Seely, “Tops on Ticket, Mrs. Simon Says ‘I’ll Never Stop Caring,’” New York Post, November 6, 1957: 1.

54 “Wagner Picks Stark-Screvone,” Brooklyn Daily, June 23, 1961:  3.

55 “Wagner Sweeps to 3d Term,” New York Daily News, November 8, 1961: 3.

56 Peter Kihss, “Maniscalco Loses on S.I.; Badillo Leading in Bronx,” New York Times, November 3, 1965: 1.

57 “Wagner Re-elected by Biggest Margin,” above.

58 Sorin, Nurturing Neighborhood, 158.

59 Philip Benjamin, “Stark Acts to Force Forest Hills to Drop Bias or Cup Matches,” New York Times, July 11, 1959: 1.

60 Chuck Stone, “Big Megilla Over a White Tennis Ball,” New York Age, July 18, 1959: 8.

61 “Lack of Decent Housing Major Threat Says Stark,” New York Amsterdam News, September 21, 1957: 17; Simon Anekwe, “Jail All Slumlords; They Don’t Mind Paying $$, Abe Stark Appeals to Courts,” New York Amsterdam News, November 24, 1962: 21; “Stark Opens War on Boro Slums,” Brooklyn Daily, November 14, 1962: 3.

62 “Wagner Re-elected by Biggest Margin,” above. Leo Egan, “City Slate Wins: Mayor Carries Ticket –Mrs. Simon Tops Christenberry,” New York Times, November 6, 1957: 1; Seely, “Tops on Ticket,” above.

63 For this discussion I have relied on Neil J. Sullivan, The Dodgers Move West, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987; Robert Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974; Andy McCue, Moving & Shaker: Walter O’Malley, the Dodgers, & Baseball’s Westward Expansion, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014; Jerald Podair, City of Dreams: Dodger Stadium and the Birth of Modern Los Angeles, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2017; Michael Shapiro, The Last Good Season: Brooklyn, the Dodgers, and Their Final Pennant Race Together, New York: Doubleday,  2003; U.S. House of Representatives, Hearings before the Antitrust Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, Organized Professional Team Sports, 85th Congress, 1stsession., 1957 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951d03669357b&seq=532; Henry D. Fetter, “Revising the Revisionists: Walter O’Malley, Robert Moses, and the End of the Brooklyn Dodgers,” History Cooperative, 2007 https://historycooperative.org/journal/revising-the-revisionists-walter-omalley-robert-moses-and-the-end-of-the-brooklyn-dodgers/; Henry D. Fetter, “Ten Days in August: A Last Chance for Brooklyn?” The National Pastime, Volume 28, 2008 https://sabr.org/journal/article/ten-days-in-august-a-last-chance-for-brooklyn/; Paul Hirsch, “Walter O’Malley Was Right,” The National Pastime: Endless Seasons: Baseball in Southern California, 2011 https://sabr.org/journal/article/walter-omalley-was-right/; Rory Costello, “Twilight at Ebbets Field, The National Pastime, Vol. 26, 2006  https://sabr.org/journal/article/twilight-at-ebbets-field/; ; Peter Marquis, “Complicating the Blame Game: New York Politics, Baseball Fans and the Dodgers’ Move Out of Brooklyn,” Revue française d’études américaines, No. 2, 2017, 206-226 https://shs.cairn.info/revue-francaise-d-etudes-americaines-2017-2-page-206?lang=en’; and reports in New York City’s newspapers.

64 Joseph M. Sheehan, “City Officials to Help Dodgers Get New Stadium,” New York Times, August 18, 1955: 1; “Trouble in Brooklyn,” New York Times, August 19, 1955: 18; “O’Malley Confers on Jersey Games,”: New York Times, August 23, 1955: 25.

65 “Dodgers Attendance Data,” Baseball Almanac, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/teams/laatte.shtml

66 Benjamin Lisle, Modern Coliseum: Stadiums and American Culture, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.

67 Fresco Thompson with Cy Rice, Every Diamond Doesn’t Sparkle, New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1964, p. 145.

68 Henry D. Fetter, “Revising the Revisionists: Walter O’Malley, Robert Moses, and the End of the Brooklyn Dodgers,” History Cooperative, 2007 https://historycooperative.org/journal/revising-the-revisionists-walter-omalley-robert-moses-and-the-end-of-the-brooklyn-dodgers/

69 Fetter, “Revising the Revisionists.”

70 Charles G. Bennett, “Stark Hints Bigger Ebbets Field Would Fit Dodgers Like a Glove,” NY Times, May 17, 1957: 26:

71 “History of the Yard,” at brooklynnavyyard.org/history

72 Maurice Carroll, “Stark, 75, Plans to Retire Sept. 8,” New York Times, August 8, 1970: 14.