When the Stadium Lights Go Dark: A Baseball Family Story

Darbi Dombroski Frisillo with her father, Hall of Fame baseball executive Dave Dombrowski

For most of America, baseball is measured in box scores, pennants, and October nights. For Dave Dombrowski, it has been a life’s work: one defined by decades in front offices, on planes, and in clubhouses where the margins between winning and losing are razor thin. Yet if you ask his daughter, Darbi Dombrowski-Frisillo, the most enduring memories of her father have little to do with the game itself.

They have everything to do with what happened when the stadium lights went dark.

Growing up, Darbi understood early that her version of “normal” looked different. Her father wasn’t just in baseball: he was in the highest levels of it. There were seasons of absence shaped by travel and responsibility, balanced by a mother—Karie Ross, a former sports broadcaster and first female reporter for ESPN College Football GameDay—who anchored home life with consistency and care. But the moment Darbi truly realized how unusual her childhood was came not from distance, but from proximity.

At the ballpark, she could walk up to men other people revered. Al Kaline wasn’t a Hall of Famer to her, he was simply “Mr. Kaline.” While friends were starstruck, Darbi was unfazed; not because she was arrogant, but because she was innocent. To her, baseball legends were just people in her orbit, folded into the rhythms of everyday life.

“What I didn’t fully grasp then, but what I understand deeply now, is how intentionally my father worked to protect that innocence,” she says.

Dave Dombrowski has led five Major League Baseball organizations, built two World Series–winning teams, and became the first head of baseball operations to guide four franchises to the Fall Classic. His résumé reads like a master class in leadership and longevity. Yet behind the public career was a private discipline: when he was home, he was home.

There were rules, some spoken, others instinctual. Unless there was an emergency, work did not follow him into the house. If calls had to be made, they happened in the car, sometimes pulled over on the side of the road, before he walked through the front door. Inside, he wasn’t an executive or a decision-maker. He was Dad.

“It helped,” he admits, “that my children didn’t care about wins and losses. They cared more about dinner together after a long road trip, or about sitting on the couch watching Survivor or The Amazing Race.” In other words, they appreciated the stability of family life, when someone important finally comes home.

Those moments, mundane by design, are what Darbi remembers most vividly. Along with spring training trips to Florida, family time in Lakeland, and childhood days that blurred work and play in a way that felt seamless, not strategic. At the time, it all felt natural. In hindsight, she sees the architecture behind it. That clarity came later, when Darbi entered the professional world herself.

Now an Associate Vice President at R Public Relations in Nashville, Darbi manages multiple clients across the lifestyle and hospitality sectors. Early in her career, the hardest lesson wasn’t strategy or media relations—it was learning how to turn work off. Only then did she fully understand the weight her father carried, along with her mother, and the discipline it took to set that weight down at home.

She also noticed the small things. Like the way her father was always responsive, not always with a solution, but with acknowledgment. A quick thank-you, or a confirmation that someone had been heard. It was a habit formed in leadership and carried into family life, and one she now mirrors professionally.

This Father’s Day arrives during a particularly symbolic season. The MLB All-Star Game will take place in Philadelphia, where Dave serves as president of baseball operations for the Philadelphia Phillies, coinciding with America’s 250th anniversary. The city will be alive with history, ceremony, and the pageantry of the game. For Dave, it’s another milestone in a career defined by them.

But milestones have never been the point.

Asked what makes her proud of her father today, Darbi doesn’t mention championships; rather, she talks about reputation. “In every city where we’ve lived, people speak kindly about my parents.” She also talks about how her childhood felt magical not because it was glamorous, but because it was grounded.

And when Dave is asked what makes him a proud father, his answer is immediate and unvarnished: “The kind of adults my children have become. Self-respecting, hardworking, and empathetic. They are humans with strong friendships and strong values.” Success, in his mind, has always been measured beyond titles.

Baseball still threads through family conversations, of course; and it always will. But these days it functions more as shorthand—an entry point into deeper discussions about patience, resilience, and the long view. About not giving up when doors close and understanding failure not as an ending, but as instruction. Those lessons, like the game itself, are cumulative.

On Father’s Day, it’s tempting to celebrate the visible achievements: the trophies, the headlines, the history books. But the quieter legacy often matters more. For Dave, it was the decision to pull over and make a call before coming home, and his discipline to be fully present. Ultimately, it was a keen understanding that the most important audience is rarely in the stands.

For all the teams Dave Dombrowski has built, the one he comes home to may be the one that matters most.

***