Bill Stewart

Who was Bill Stewart?

William Joseph Stewart was an American coach and sports official who was an ice hockey referee and coach, and also an umpire in Major League Baseball. In his first season as head coach of the Chicago Black Hawks, he led the team to a Stanley Cup championship in 1938. Born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, he was the first American-trained head coach to win the Stanley Cup. He was also an umpire in the National League from 1933 to 1954, and officiated in four World Series and four All-Star Games, calling balls and strikes for the last contest. He also was the home plate umpire for Johnny Vander Meer's second consecutive no-hitter in 1938, and was the crew chief for the 1951 three-game pennant playoff between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Stewart grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, and competed in baseball, hockey, track and wrestling in high school. He became a minor league baseball player with Worcester in the New England League in 1913, and in 1917, while with Montreal, was the first International League player to enlist for World War I service, joining the Navy. After the war he was signed by the Chicago White Sox, but he suffered an arm injury falling down a flight of stairs while working as a census taker in Boston, and was unable to remain with the team in 1919. He stayed in the minor leagues as a pitcher and manager until 1930, when he became an umpire in the Eastern League, and later officiated in the International and New York-Pennsylvania Leagues.