Monroe “Dolly” Stark

Monroe “Dolly” Stark – not to be confused with his namesake Albert “Dolly” Stark, the first Jewish umpire in modern baseball – endured an Odyssean journey through baseball.  Monroe Stark, the original “Dolly Stark,” logged an itinerant career in baseball from 1904 to 1922 in several minor leagues, as well as a brief fall call-up with the American League Cleveland Naps in 1909 and a run with the Brooklyn Superbas of the National League from 1910-1912. Serving as both a player and manager in more than a dozen cities, Stark was a right-handed hitting and throwing utility player and the epitome of a baseball journeyman of the Deadball Era.

Stark’s father, William Malachi Stark, Sr., served in the 23rd Infantry (Mississippi) of the Confederate Army and was wounded during the Atlanta campaign of Sherman’s “March to the Sea” in 1864.1  Born in Ripley, Tippah County, Mississippi, on January 19, 1885, Monroe Randolph Stark was the fourth child and second son of parents William Stark, Sr., a larryman (grouter for a bricklayer), and Olivia Stark.2  Monroe Stark apparently acquired the nickname “Dolly” in childhood, as his name is handwritten on the 1900 census as “Dole” but could be intended to read either “Doll” or possibly “Doly” when Stark was 15 years old and living with his family in Tennessee.  How the name was acquired is a mystery, but as the youngest of four children, it might be suspected that his older siblings, especially his two older sisters, viewed him from birth as a “doll” and the name stuck.

During the 1904 season, the 19-year-old Stark played with the Clarksville (Tennessee) Grays of the Class D Kentucky-Illinois-Tennessee (KITTY) League. There is no record of his playing in 1905, but he appeared in 1906 rostered with both the Tecumseh Indians of the Class D Southern Michigan League and the Grand Rapids (Michigan) Wolverines of the Class B Central League. He also is mentioned as playing with Vanderbilt University that year, although it is unknown if he attended school or was simply playing on the baseball team as a non-student, as was a common practice at the time.3 

The year 1907 saw Stark with the Columbus (Mississippi) Discoverers of the Class D Cotton State League, where he hit a meager .128 in 15 games, but nonetheless began the 1908 season with Class A Southern Association Little Rock, quite a jump based on his previous performance. The Atlanta Georgian referenced Stark as having played independent ball in Hot Springs, Arkansas, at outfield and catcher when Little Rock Travelers manager Mike Finn signed him in February 1908.4  By June the Georgian had lauded Stark as “one of the season’s best finds. … He is fast, a good batter, handy on the bases and altogether a star.”5 In the same lineup as future Hall of Famer Tris Speaker, Stark played 93 games at shortstop for the Travelers before he was sold to San Antonio in August for $500.6 

With the San Antonio Bronchos, Stark was managed by Pat Newnam and George Leidy, who famously had tutored a young Ty Cobb at Augusta a few years prior.  Stark finished 1908 with San Antonio and, never one to sit still, accepted a coaching job in the offseason with Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College in Starkville (today Mississippi State University), stating, “Starkville, as the name implies, is the home seat of my family, and I am very well known there. They made me a very flattering offer, and I could not see my way to turning it down.”7  In Starkville, Stark would have the opportunity to coach a young. hard-throwing lefty pitcher named Willie Mitchell. Mitchell was impressive enough that Stark convinced him to play alongside him at San Antonio after graduation. The young strikeout artist, only four years younger than his manager, agreed, and promptly threw a no-hitter against Shreveport in June and struck out 20 Galveston batters in an August game.8  Years later, Mitchell would claim to have struck out seven men in a single inning while at San Antonio, with Stark catching him and not being able to handle his pitches, dropping enough third strikes to allow four men to score.9  Stark hit .277 in 1909, and the American League Cleveland Naps signed him along with Mitchell. 

Once Stark was with Cleveland, his former manager Leidy looked forward to a clash between his proteges Stark and Cobb, declaring, “Stark is without doubt the best in the business in tagging a runner, and he isn’t afraid of the devil himself. If Cobb ever tries any funny business with Stark there will be an awful scrap, and Stark will whip Cobb all the way.”10  But that wasn’t meant to be, as the Naps never faced Detroit in September 1909, and Dolly would finish his first brief Major League stint with 12 hits in 19 games and 11 errors in 88 chances at shortstop.  Stark “showed such class that Cleveland sporting editors, fans and management liked him,”11 but his performance was poor enough that Cleveland sold him to the Dayton (Ohio) Veterans of the Class B Central League for the 1910 season.

Stark showed well enough at Dayton to earn another shot at the major leagues in 1910, this time with the National League Brooklyn Superbas. Toward the end of the season, the Superbas purchased Stark’s contract for $2,000, with the shortstop due to report at the end of Dayton’s season.12  Stark staged a holdout, refusing to accompany the Dayton team to South Bend, Indiana, and threatening to quit unless he was given a piece of the purchase money. Dayton boss Charles “Punch” Knoll promptly suspended Stark and fined him $500, “one of the largest ever levied on a minor league ball player.”13  As a result of the suspension, the 25-year-old shortstop was called up to Brooklyn earlier than planned on September 2, playing in the second game of a doubleheader against Boston, banging out a double and according to the Brooklyn Citizen looking “lively as a cricket in the field” by handling seven chances without an error.14  Stark played out September with a .165 batting average and 19 errors at shortstop, but the sixth-place Superbas and manager “Bad” Bill Dahlen had such limited options that he was invited back in 1911 regardless.  In the meantime, Stark went bear hunting in Mississippi with former teammate Mitchell.15

In 1911 Stark was beat out at shortstop by Bert Tooley. Stark praised Tooley in the press as “playing fine ball for us” and “the fastest man on the club”.16  Stark wouldn’t see action until May 9, after which he played fairly regularly until he was severely spiked by Josh Devore of the New York Giants on June 27 and sat out nearly a month.  The season nonetheless turned out to be Stark’s best in the major leagues. He hit .295 in 70 games as Brooklyn’s utility infielder, fielding a solid .959 in 18 games at second base and .910 in 34 games at shortstop. On August 22, with his parents in town from Texas, Stark pinch-hit in the bottom of the 10th and laced a walk-off single to leftfield to defeat St. Louis.17  On October 4 he started a 4-3-6 triple play in the ninth inning to help shut out the Giants.

Of special significance was a game against the National League Boston Rustlers on October 6. It was the immortal Cy Young’s last pitching appearance in major league baseball, and Stark started the game at third base and hit seventh in the lineup.  At 44, Young was but a shadow of his once-legendary self on the mound, but the now-portly pitcher must have still struck the young Stark as imposing. With Boston leading 2-0 in the second inning, Stark came to bat and rapped out a single to drive in the first run for Brooklyn, and would eventually come around to score, giving Brooklyn a 3-2 lead. Brooklyn broke the game open off Young in the seventh, scoring eight runs and unceremoniously sending him walking from the mound, throwing his glove in frustration.18

In early 1912 Stark wrote three guest articles for the Dayton Herald on topics of baseball strategy such as signals and baserunning.19   During his day job he was locked in a spring training battle with Tooley for playing time before earning the starting nod at shortstop for opening day. In the opener against the Giants, the New York Tribune credited Stark with a record for fouling off 12 consecutive Rube Marquard deliveries in the sixth inning.20  On April 20 a controversial home run call compelled Dahlen to rush from the dugout to confront umpire Cy Rigler, who promptly “swatted [him] in the face.”21  When a riot ensued and players and fans rushed the field, “Dolly put his right hand out of business in battling his way out of the crowd,” as William J. Granger delicately stated the situation in the Brooklyn Citizen.22  With Stark on the mend, Tooley took advantage of his chance, collecting three hits against Boston on April 23 on his way to claiming the shortstop position for good.  Desperate to stop a late-May losing streak, Brooklyn owner Charlie Ebbets traded Stark and pitcher Wilbert Schardt to the minor-league Newark Indians for shortstop Bob Fisher and outfielder Bill Kay.23 

After being sent down, Stark returned to his familiar practice of bouncing from one minor league team to another. In 1912 he played for Newark and Buffalo of the International League before heading west to Pacific Coast League Sacramento for the 1913 season. Over the next five seasons he would play in the Southern Association with Memphis, Nashville, San Antonio (again), Little Rock (again), and Memphis (again).

In 1918 Stark heeded the call to serve “Over There,” as did thousands of other Americans during “The Great War” after America ended its position of neutrality and declared war on Germany. In August 1918, the New York Giants’ Harry “Moose” McCormick, then serving as a US Army lieutenant, chided major-league players for not doing their part overseas, claiming that soldiers loved playing baseball but were so disenchanted with the major leagues that the military newspaper Stars and Stripes had quit printing box scores.  McCormick complained, “The soldiers like to play ball. They are interested in baseball, but it’s in their own organization. You can’t get enough baseballs to go around over there.”24  Perhaps in response to McCormick’s rebuke, Stark and many others travelled to Europe not as soldiers, but as Y.M.C.A. volunteers.

In mid-September, former Oakland Tribune sports editor Carl E. Brazier submitted a letter to the paper from a ship crossing the Atlantic. The paper explained that Brazier was among “many other well-known writers signed up to go to France to assist the Y.M.C.A. in promoting its athletic affairs among our soldier boys in France.”   In his letter, Brazier mentioned, “Among those going over in the same bunch that I am going with is Dolly Stark, formerly with the Sacramento ball club under Harry Wolverton.”25  In October, Stark’s father alerted the press in Memphis that Dolly had landed safely in France ready to perform his service in uniform as a Y.M.C.A. director.26  Stark was one of more than 1,000 Y.M.C.A. directors employed to carry out training the troops in baseball, as both a means of further conditioning them and socialization to boost morale.27

Before his return to the United States in the spring of 1919, Stark was offered a contract to umpire by the Southern Association.28  Umpiring was not to be, however, as the Augusta (Georgia) Dollies announced in early June that Stark was taking over as player-manager of the club.29  Despite a fifth-place finish in the six-team SALLY League in 1919, Stark earned his players’ loyalty and improved the club, which was “going about as strong as any at season’s close”.30  Augusta renewed his contract in 1920, when he had the perhaps unenviable opportunity to manage Cobb, who was with the team mid-summer rehabbing from a leg injury.31  Stark tried his hand as a manager in an “outlaw” league in 1921 for an independent team in Jackson, Tennessee, which was likely appealing to him as it brought him closer to his home in Memphis.32  In 1922 he played in 16 games with the Class D Western Association Okmulgee (Oklahoma) Drillers before leaving to take a managerial job in the Class D Georgia State League.33

Stark was married in September 1922 to Miss Ellen McDermott in the Bronx, New York.34  That winter he tried his hand at basketball as a guard with Boston Red Sox scout Eddie Holly’s “Majors,” a barnstorming team comprised of current and former big-leaguers who travelled the Northeast in a series of games for which legendary baseball comedians Nick Altrock and Al Schacht served as an opening act.35 Stark’s last year playing Organized Baseball was 1922, and his professional career came full circle in 1923 when he returned to the KITTY League, where he had begun his minor-league playing career in 1904, to manage the Paducah (Kentucky) Indians. 

After the short KITTY League season, a “Dolly Stark” seemed to have caught on with a semipro team in Bar Harbor, Maine, as a shortstop.36  The Sporting News, however, questioned if “it was the same Stark that has been playing throughout the Southern states for the past few seasons.”37  Players of this period often played in lower leagues under aliases, or perhaps the player in question was the “other” Dolly Stark, Albert.  Whatever the case, Monroe Stark seems to have been the type of ballplayer that found retirement an unwelcome prospect. Stark’s career had taken him all over, from the Class D Kitty League to National League Brooklyn, from Mississippi to France, and he had made a favorable impression in nearly all of those places. He now returned home.

In 1924 Stark was out of baseball entirely and working in a Memphis roadhouse called The Cherokee Inn when tragedy struck on December 1. According to witnesses, Stark had been drinking with a friend, local automobile salesman Harry S. Atkinson, when the two erupted into a loud verbal altercation. Stark encouraged his friend to sleep it off in an upstairs room at the inn, which he appeared to do. But when Stark returned to the dining room, Atkinson walked down the stairs holding Stark’s own pistol, shortly after which “[t]he argument was resumed and ended in the fatal shooting of Stark.”38  A fatal roadhouse brawl involving a former major-league player was fodder for newspaper headlines across the nation. Despite Atkinson later claiming that Stark had first assaulted him with a fire poker, in March of 1925 he pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to a maximum of five years in prison.39  His wandering at its end, Dolly Stark was laid to rest at Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis.40    

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Bill Lamb and Mike Eisenbath and fact-checked by Joe Wancho.

Photo credit: Monroe “Dolly” Stark, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources shown in the Notes, the author used Baseball-Reference.com.

Notes

1 “U.S., Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861-1865,” Ancestry.  (https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1555/records/2287336) Entry for “William Malachi Stark.”

2 “1900 United States Federal Census,” Ancestry. (https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/7602/records/61220666) Entry for “Dole Starke.”

3 “Will Tackle Collegians,” Nashville Banner, March 6, 1906: 7

4 “Encouraged by Keith’s Success Finn Has Signed 2 More Genuine Arkansas Rubes,” Atlanta Georgian, February 8, 1908.

5 “Not News, But Views,” Atlanta Georgian, June 11, 1908: 32.

6 “Griggs Goes to Toledo,” Prescott (Arkansas) Daily News, August 15, 1908: 1.

7 “Dolly Stark Accepts Coach Job at School,” San Antonio Light, February 25, 1909: 6.

8 Stephen V. Rice. “Willie Mitchell,” Society for American Baseball Research .https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/willie-mitchell/.

9 “Mitchell’s Wonderful Feat,” Logansport (Indiana) Chronicle, August 12, 1916: 3.

10 “Stark Is Expected to Take Ty Cobb When Demon Spiker Tries to Steal,” Cleveland Press, September 20,           1909: 10.

11 “Dolly Stark May Play with Dayton This Year,” San Antonio Light and Gazette, January 4, 1910: 12.

12 “Short Sport for New Castle Fans,” New Castle (Pennsylvania) News, August 27, 1910: 7.

13 “Heavy Penalty for Stark,” Fort Wayne (Indiana) Sentinel, August 30, 1910: 8.

14 “Stark Shows Speed in His First Game with the Superbas,” Brooklyn Citizen, September 3, 1910: 3.

15 “Sporting News in Tablets,” Fort Wayne Sentinel, January 4, 1911: 8.

16 “Dolly Stark Pays Rival Compliment,” Dayton (Ohio) Herald, April 20, 1911: 10.

17 William J. Granger. “Stark Makes Good as a Big Leaguer in ‘Good Time’ Line,” Brooklyn Citizen, August 23, 1911: 3.

18 Thomas E. Merrick, “October 6, 1911: Cy Young pitchers his final game,” Society for American Baseball Research. https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/october-6-1911-cy-young-pitches-his-final-game/.

19 Dolly Stark, “Bescher Is Serious Behind ‘The Smile That Won’t Come Off,” Dayton Herald, March 2, 1912: 10.

20 “Dolly Stark Sets Record,” New-York Tribune, April 12, 1912: 10.

21 “Questionable Home Run Beats Scrappy Brooklyns,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 21, 1912: 60.

22 William J. Granger, “Dolly Stark Injured His Hand During Saturday’s Riot,” Brooklyn Citizen., April 22, 1912:4.

23 Thomas S. Rice, “Ebbets Goes to Newark Farm to Bolster Up the Superbas,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 29, 1912: 16.

24 “Yankee Soldiers Bitterly Denounce Ball Players, says Lieut. McCormick,” Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Telegraph, August 20, 1918: 9.

25 Carl E. Brazier, “Carl E. Brazier Now on Way for Over There,” Oakland Tribune, September 15, 1918: 34.

26 “Dolly Stark in France,” Washington (DC) Herald, October 12, 1918: 8.

27 Summary of World War Work of the American YMCA. The International Committee of Young Men’s Christian Associations, 1920.

28 “Soldier Players in Favor with Dixie,” The Sporting News, March 20, 1919: 7.

29 “Dolly Stark to Manage Augusta,” Birmingham (Alabama) Age-Herald, June 5, 1919: 10.

30 Jerry Lyons. “Dolly Stark Came Too Late,” Sporting News. September 11, 1919: 2.

31 “Cobb Takes Workout,” Canton (Ohio) Daily News, July 2, 1920: 25.

32 “Stark to Manage Outlaw Ball Team,” Atlanta Constitution, February 3, 1921: 8.

33 “Minors Return to Local Lot Today,” Joplin (Missouri) Globe, August 1, 1922: 4.

34 “Marriage License Indexes, 1907-2018,” Ancestry. (https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/61406/records/8720907) Entry for “Ellen McDermott.”

35 “Ed Holly’s Famous Majors and Nick Altrock Play Elks at Y. Tonight,” Hagerstown (Maryland) Morning Herald, January 30, 1923: 6.

36 “Won from Easterns Lost to Augusta,” Bar Harbor (Maine) Times, August 8, 1923: 2.

37 “Questions and Answers,” The Sporting News, September 18, 1924: 4.

38 “Dolly Stark Was Shot to Death,” Paris (Texas) Morning News, December 2, 1924: 1.

39 “Dolly Stark’s Slayer Takes Five-Year Term,” Chattanooga Daily Times, March 11, 1925: 12.

40 Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/12778884/monroe_randolph stark: accessed November 13, 2025), memorial page for Monroe Randolph “Dolly” Stark (19 Jan1885–1 Dec 1924), Find a Grave Memorial ID 12778884, citing Elmwood Cemetery, Memphis, Shelby County, Tennessee, USA; maintained by Bigwoo (contributor 46780407).