On the day Dolly Parton died, a fan went viral at the Washington Nationals game for wearing a colorful striped jersey with a portrait of the legendary singer's signature smile and poofy blond hair.
The jersey is from the Nashville Dollys, a Sandlot baseball team in the Tennessee capital.
"It's crazy," Nashville Dollys founder Ben Montalbano said of seeing a jersey he designed to honor the legendary singer and pop culture icon, who died on Tuesday, Aug. 25 at the age of 80.
He added in a phone conversation with USA TODAY Sports the next day that the team, and their jerseys, are "... giving a unique cross section of Dolly Parton and baseball fans an opportunity to support and love her."
angel in the infield 🥹💖 pic.twitter.com/lQEcMkvHKD
— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) August 26, 2026
Montalbano
designed the jersey based on the Houston Astros fan favorite tequila sunrise uniforms. He swapped the orange and yellow stripes for teal to represent Parton's eyeshadow and pink for her lipstick. He said even before the special tribute to the singer, he gets a text about once a month about someone spotting a Dollys jersey across the country.
"People love those jerseys," he said. "... No one like her. Not one person like her."
Montalbano founded the Dollys in 2019. He grew up in Chicago and played baseball through middle school, when he decided to focus on music.
"I was always super into baseball. I'm a huge Cubs fan and lived in Chicago during their World Series run, and I'd always wanted to play baseball again," he said. "I always had fun memories of it growing up, playing with my dad, with my friends, and there weren't really any opportunities to play baseball in a recreational capacity with a certain vibe."
He moved to Nashville in 2018 to further his career in the music industry. Just like Dolly left her hometown for the Music City in hopes of making it big.
That's where Montalbano discovered Sandlot Revolution baseball, the lighthearted league he was hoping for. He saw a game between the Nashville Bluejeans and Ellington Blues and he was fascinated.
"I kind of stumbled into this whole world that was really starting to grow," he said, "and I really wanted to start my own team. The ethos of Sandlot is inclusivity, joy, play for play's sake, Americana, not taking yourself too seriously."
He found a lot of parallels between the league's values and what Parton exemplified. The singer was known not only for her hits like "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You," but for her bubbly personality, over-the-top hairdos and generous philanthropy. Her Imagination Library program has provided millions of free books to children in underprivileged communities.
One of the original Sandlot teams, the Texas Playboys, also has a music-inspired name based off Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys.
"My mind immediately went to Dolly," Montalbano said, "and the first team name I thought, it was the Nashville Dollys. That's kind of how it started, and it just grew organically."
Montalbano admits he didn't grow up listening to country music. His brother put him onto rock and alternative artists like Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam.
"I kind of always thumbed my nose at country music, and that was very naive of me," he said, noting that moving to Nashville helped him understand who Parton was. "... She's just such a cultural icon."
But he knew Parton's biggest songs, especially because he had a gig performing at a piano bar in college. He said "9 to 5" is a favorite of his and the movie is "incredible." He also played banjo in a folk band around that time when Mumford & Sons and Bon Iver were in their heyday.
"I ended up falling into a folk tradition that obviously Dolly had a huge influence on," he said, "and I really just fell in love with that style and timbre of instruments and music, especially like her older records."
Now, Montalbano's life has come full circle, bringing together his passions of baseball and music. The Dollys have been playing baseball for seven years, have a full roster of 30 players and travel across the country.
"I never thought that a baseball team inspired by Dolly Parton would be such a huge part of my life," he said, "because my closest friends are on the team now, and all of our partners are friends, and we take trips together."
The Dollys were already giving Parton her flowers while she was alive. Now that she has passed away, Montalbano encouraged fans to donate to Parton's Imagination Library program and said he hopes to continue her legacy of generosity.
"It still hasn't hit me that she's not here any longer," he said. "I really want to double click into our community giving back, which we don't do enough of. I would really love to be more involved in the community, and just support any initiatives that continue to show kindness to people that need kindness."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How Nashville Dollys baseball team will celebrate legacy of Dolly Parton
