Dick Allen: One Vote Shy of the Hall of Fame, Again

Dick Allen, one of baseball’s greatest hitters from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, has now set a record that his legions of fans hope will not be extended: he’s now twice fallen just one vote shy of a plaque in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Allen was one of ten candidates on the “Golden Days” Eras Committee ballot, which was tasked with considering players whose primary impact on the game of baseball was from 1950-69.

From 1964-74, the right-handed hitting Allen can be credibly called the best of all hitters in all of  Major League Baseball. During an era populated by Hall of Fame legends named Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, Willie McCovey, Carl Yastrzemski, and Harmon Killebrew, only Hammerin’ Hank combined the disparate skills of reaching base and hitting for power at the level approximating the performance of Allen. When adjusted for ballpark effects, not one other batter had a higher OPS (on-base + slugging percentage) than Richard Anthony Allen.

Allen’s adjusted 165 OPS+ from 1964-74 was the highest in all of baseball. You might think that such an extraordinary peak performance would have already resulted in a plaque in Cooperstown. You would be wrong. Despite this significant accomplishment, Allen never got more than 18.9% of the vote from the BBWAA (Baseball Writers Association of America) in 14 tries on the Hall of Fame ballot. The concept of OPS (or its adjusted version, OPS+) did not exist when Allen was being considered by the BBWAA.

The 2022 Golden Days Ballot

On Sunday, December 5th, when Hall of Fame President Josh Rawitch announced that the 16-member committee had selected four new Hall of Famers (out of ten candidates), Allen’s family and supporters had every right to feel a temporary moment of elation. As this piece will detail, Allen was the best candidate on the ballot. But, as Rawitch announced that Gil Hodges was a newly minted Hall of Famer, and then Jim Kaat, it occurred to the leader of the “Allen for Cooperstown” movement (Mark Carfagno) that Rawitch was reading the names alphabetically. When Rawitch finished by declaring that Minnie Minoso and Tony Oliva had also been conferred plaques in Cooperstown, that fleeting elation turned into depression.

“Richard Allen, Dick’s son, started weeping. So did Dick’s wife, Willa. His grandson. Nephew. Relatives. Friends. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room. ‘People were so sad,’ Carfagno said, ‘and then they were pissed off. It was unreal. We used to be so worried whether Dick would be alive when he got into the Hall of Fame. Now, I’m worried whether I’ll be alive when it happens,’ said Carfagno (who is 68 years old).

— Bob Nightengale (USA Today, Dec. 11th, 2021)

Originally, the Golden Days Committee was supposed to meet on December 6th, 2020, but the vote was postponed for a year due to COVID-19. In a bitter irony, the day after the vote that might have put him into the Hall was supposed to take place, Allen passed away at his home in Wampum, Pennsylvania at the age of 78.

In recent years, thanks in part to the relentless campaigning of Carfagno, a former groundskeeper for the Philadelphia Phillies who befriended Allen in the 1970s, there has been a greater appreciation for Allen’s extraordinary hitting skill.

Seven years ago (in December 2014), Allen received 11 out of 16 votes on the “Golden Era” Eras Committee vote for the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2015, putting Allen closer than ever but sadly just one vote shy of immortality. (Oliva also fell one vote short of a Cooperstown plaque that year, with Kaat coming two shy). It’s easy to understand the bitterness. Oliva got that one extra vote in 2021 to get the exact number (12 out of 16) required for a Cooperstown plaque. Kaat and Hodges also got exactly 12 votes, with Minoso getting 14. Allen, for the second time in a row, fell one vote shy.

Because the 16 members of the Eras Committees are limited to voting for four out of the ten candidates, it’s really hard to elect multiple members to the Hall of Fame given that a 75% tally is required. This committee was clearly determined not to repeat the shutout of the 2015 ballot. The members coalesced around five candidates, conferring 61 out of a possible 64 votes to Minoso, Oliva, Kaat, Hodges, and Allen. The other five candidates (Maury Wills, Ken Boyer, Roger Maris, Billy Pierce, and Danny Murtaugh) received a combined total of three or fewer. Essentially, the committee members came one vote shy of pulling off an inside straight. Alas, it was Allen who was left without a chair when the music stopped.

In August 2020, the Philadelphia Phillies retired Allen’s uniform number, making him the seventh member of the franchise to have his uniform number retired. Allen’s #15 will never be worn again. The other Phillies alumni to be so honored also have plaques hanging in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. If this is to also happen for Dick Allen, it won’t be until the summer of 2027; the Golden Days Committee is next scheduled to meet in December 2026.

This piece is a mini-biography of Allen’s baseball life and makes the case for why he deserves a plaque in Cooperstown even if now that honor will have to be conferred posthumously and delayed by at least five more years.

Cooperstown Cred: Dick Allen (1B/3B/LF)

• Phillies (1963-69, ’75-’76), Cardinals (1970), Dodgers (1971), White Sox (1972-74), Athletics (1977)
• Career: .292 BA, .378 OBP, .534 SLG, 351 HR, 1,119 RBI
• Career: 156 OPS+, 58.7 WAR (Wins Above Replacement)
• 1964 N.L. Rookie of the Year (.318 BA, 29 HR, 91 RBI, 125 Runs, 162 OPS+, 8.8 WAR)
• 1972 A.L. MVP (.308/.420/.603, 37 HR, 113 RBI, 199 OPS+, 8.6 WAR)
• 7-time All-Star
• Led all MLB in OPS+ (165) from 1964-74

(cover photo: Philadelphia Tribune)

This article was originally posted in August 2020. It has been updated with the news that Allen fell one vote shy of the Hall of Fame on the Golden Era ballot. The vast majority of the balance of the piece remains as originally written.

The Elevator Pitch: Why Dick Allen Belongs in the Hall of Fame

All you have to do is read (for the second time) the last bullet point under Dick Allen’s “Cooperstown Cred” to understand the fundamental qualification that makes him worthy of a plaque in the Hall of Fame. During his prime years (1964-74), Allen got on base and hit for power at a combined level that was 65% better than the average Major League Baseball player and better than every other hitter in the game.

This is the list (ranked by OPS+) of players with at least 5,000 plate appearances from 1964-74:

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Besides Allen and Frank Howard, the other 8 players on this list are obvious Hall of Famers. Don’t however leap to put Allen in the same bucket with Howard. Hondo is 18 points behind Allen on this list. His career OPS+ was 142, an excellent number but still 14 points shy of Allen’s 156. Speaking of which, Allen’s career OPS+ is tied (with Frank Thomas and Willie Mays) for the 18th highest in baseball history (minimum 5,000 PA). Howard is tied for 50th.

Best OPS+ in all of baseball for a full 11 seasons. 18th best OPS+ ever. Sounds like a Hall of Famer to me.

What the Writers Never Understood

In real life, Dick Allen never got close to Cooperstown when he was on the BBWAA ballot. The reason for the Cooperstown snub is obvious: as previously noted, during Allen’s years on that ballot (1983-97), nobody had ever heard of OPS+. Sure, it’s true that slugging percentage was a statistic that was well known and people were starting to become aware of the value of on-base percentage but nobody had ever put the two together. If you think about it, OPS (on-base + slugging percentage) is a weird, contrived statistic. It measures two completely different things. It would be like an NBA statistician combining assists and rebounds into one number.

OPS works however because it’s fairly simple to understand and it combines the two most important things regarding offensive performance into one number. The purpose of the advanced version (OPS+) is to put proper context into that player’s performance, adjusting for the ease or difficulty of a player’s ballpark or the overall era in which he played. By putting that performance on a scale in which 100 is league average, you can evaluate the relative merits of a hitter who played in the offensively-starved 1960s against one playing in the super-charged late 1990s.

Anyway, when Dick Allen was on the BBWAA ballot most writers focused on longevity stats such as total HR or Hits. Allen’s MVP trophy and robust slugging percentage clearly swayed a small percentage of voters but not nearly enough to get remotely close to the 75% required for enshrinement in the Hall of Fame.

Today it’s different. We understand OPS+. And when you’re #1 at getting on base and hitting for power for a span of eleven MLB seasons, that’s worthy of a spot in Cooperstown. That’s why it’s long overdue to put Dick Allen into the Hall of Fame.

This is a mini-biography and, as such, is a lengthy piece. If you currently only have time for a “case for and against” I will hold back my tears and invite you to bookmark the page while scrolling down towards the bottom of the piece to get to the detailed analysis of Allen’s worthiness for Cooperstown.

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The Fascinating Story of Dick Allen’s Life

Besides the lack of awareness of the yet-to-be-invented OPS statistic, there are other reasons why Dick Allen never got close to Cooperstown while he was on the writers’ ballot. The story of Allen’s MLB career is one that involves a good deal of controversy. As I will detail in the engrossing tale about Allen’s life in baseball, he was asked to be a pioneer of sorts in a manner for which he was ill-prepared and ill-suited. He was shy and distrustful of the media. Some baseball writers of this era held grudges against press-unfriendly ballplayers when it came time to vote for them for the Hall of Fame.

Allen also had multiple run-ins with management during his 15-year career. He was a frequent spring training holdout during the pre-free agency era in which players had little leverage to procure a salary equivalent to their value. Allen wasn’t a fan of following the rules during a time in which African-American baseball players were expected to conform. Although many of his fellow players will swear on a stack of Bibles that Allen was a great teammate, there was a narrative that followed him throughout his career that he was a malcontent who hurt his teams with his personality as much as he helped them with his bat.

Controversy followed Allen even regarding what he was called. As a teen, he was occasionally called “Sleepy” because of a drooping eyelid, the result of a childhood accident. Shortly after he was signed by the Philadelphia Phillies in 1960, the scribes in the City of Brotherly Love dubbed him “Richie.” The new name was perhaps an homage to Richie Ashburn but nobody bothered to ask Dick how he felt about it. Spoiler alert: Dick was never a fan of being called “Richie,” a “kid’s name” in his view.

In preparation for this feature, I read dozens of old newspaper articles and a biography about Allen, God Almighty Himself by Mitchell Nathanson. Much of the biographical detail in this piece is culled from this excellent book. As I read this book, a great many names of other baseball stars jumped into my head: I thought about Jackie Robinson. I thought about Tony Gwynn, Reggie Jackson, and Billy Martin, about Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Pete Rose, and Mike Schmidt. I also thought about stars in other sports, such as Muhammad Ali, Charles Barkley, and Allen Iverson.

Allen was a student of hitting, one of the first to use videotape to analyze his swing (reminding me of Gwynn). He was a rebel (like Ali, but without the civil rights agenda) at a time when rebelliousness from black athletes was not appreciated. He feuded with his managers (à la Jackson and Martin) and the press (Williams). Like Mantle (and countless other baseball players), Allen liked to drink. In his autobiography Crash, Allen recounts a spring training game in which he collided with a sliding Mantle at third base: “when the dust finally settles, the ump looks down at both of us scrawled on the ground and shakes his head. ‘I’ve never smelled so much booze in my life… Get off your asses before you set each other on fire.'”

Allen liked horse racing (as did Rose) but, unlike Rose, he was more interested in the horses themselves than the wagering. He had no use for batting practice (Iverson) and never wanted to be a role model (Barkley). He demanded top dollar for his services at levels players had not previously been paid (Ruth). And, despite being the team’s best player, he was often booed by the home fans in Philadelphia (Schmidt).

Allen had peccadilloes that were uniquely his own. He liked to wear a batting helmet in the field, simply because he preferred it to a crumpled and sweaty cap in the back of his pocket. He enjoyed wearing mutton chop sideburns and, thanks to that childhood eye injury, he wore glasses on the field and at the plate.

From those who saw him play, Allen had athletic ability on par with the game’s best, and, for those eleven seasons, he performed on a level with the greatest in baseball history. When he was a rookie, his Phillies’ teammates were in awe of his “quick wrists, massive forearms, sprinter’s legs” and the 42-ounce bat he carried to the plate, the heaviest in the league since Ruth. Allen was known for hitting thunderous home runs but also legging out inside-the-park jobs, often in the most momentous occasions, as we’ll see.

Because he only played for 13 full seasons and because of the off-field issues, Allen’s performance has yet to be rewarded with the game’s ultimate honor. This piece will hopefully enlighten the reader with the true story regarding those “issues” and help you make your own determination whether you agree that it’s time to put Dick Allen in the Hall of Fame.

Dick Allen: Early Years

Richard Anthony Allen was born on March 8, 1942, in Wampum, Pennsylvania, the same town in which he passed away in December 2020. Although Allen would eventually be dubbed the Wampum Walloper, his family lived in Chewton, the neighboring village, about 45 miles northwest of Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field. Allen was one of nine children raised by his mother Era. “Mrs. Allen,” as she was respectfully called throughout the community, was a God-fearing disciplinarian. Allen’s father Coy owned a trash-hauling business; he was often on the road and abandoned his family when Dick was 15.

Dick and his four brothers (Coy Jr., Caesar, Hank, and Ron) were all known as superior athletes and would transform Wampum High School into a sports powerhouse in the late 1950s. All five brothers earned All-State honors in basketball; Dick and his brothers Hank and Ron all played together in 1958 and the 1960 team, captained by Dick, won the Division B State Championship. Dick earned All-American honors and most observers at the time felt he could play professional basketball. Although he was just under 6 feet tall, Dick was known for his monster dunks. He was able to touch the backboard 16 inches above the rim.

Allen had over 100 scholarship offers to play college basketball but decided, in 1960, to go straight into professional baseball thanks to a $70,000 signing bonus from the Philadelphia Phillies. At the time it was the highest bonus ever given to an African-American prospect. Students of history might see the Phillies as an odd fit for the shy and introverted Allen given the franchise’s spotty history with race relations but Phillies scout John Ogden ingratiated himself to Dick’s mother and older brother Coy, who essentially acted as Dick’s agent. Ogden had started following Dick when he was a sophomore and made it his mission to sign the phenom.

The annual amateur player draft was still years away from coming into existence and so, ironically, all high school players were “free agents” while their professional counterparts would not earn that right until the 1970s. The recruitment of top star athletes to sign professional baseball contracts was not unlike the way high school stars were recruited for college scholarships. And, just as the college recruiting game has long been influenced by gifts, Coy was signed to a scouting contract by the Phillies and was seen driving around Wampum in a brand new car shortly after the team inked both Dick and his older brother Hank (who got $35,000).

Dick Allen: Minor Leagues (1960-62)

In 1960, Philadelphia had two Class D options for first-year players (in Tampa, FL and Elmira, NY). Coy is credited for coaxing the Phillies organization to send the 18-year old Dick to the northern location, where Hank was already playing. Dick was a shortstop in high school and that’s where he played with the Pioneers. In what was his only professional season as a shortstop, Allen forecast his long-term defensive shortcomings by committing 48 errors in 85 games for a .867 fielding percentage.

Offensively, Dick had a slash line of .281 BA/.389 OBP/.478 SLG with 8 HR and 42 RBI. In his first game (on June 6th), the Wampum Walloper hit his first professional home run and he did it by racing around the basepaths for an inside-the-park job.

Dick was sent to the Pioneer League in 1961; he played for the Magic Valley Cowboys in Idaho Falls. In the Potato State Allen started to show the form that earned him that $70,000 bonus. He slashed .317/.401/.526 with 21 HR and 94 RBI. Playing 2nd base, his defense was improved but still spotty.

Despite a productive season with the bat, the first ripples in Allen’s career-long disillusionment with management occurred in the off-season when the Phillies left him unprotected in the expansion draft. Either the New York Mets or Houston Colt 45’s could have swiped Dick Allen for a mere $50,000 but both fledgling organizations took a pass. There were reports coming out of his first two years in the minors that Allen was tough to “deal with” and that he was having vision problems because of the childhood accident that left him with that droopy eyelid. He soon decided to wear glasses, something he would do for the rest of his career.

Allen’s response to the snub was to pound the ball in 1962, slashing .329/.409/.548 with 20 HR and 109 RBI for the Class A Williamsport Grays. Defensively, Allen was asked to switch positions once again, this time moving to center field, a position for which he was ill-suited despite his quickness and a strong arm.

A Season in Little Rock (1963)

Dick Allen played in the Pioneer League in 1961. Two years later, at the age of 21, he was asked to be a pioneer as the first African-American player to suit up in Little Rock, Arkansas. Just six years prior, Governor Orville Faubus became a national figure when he used the Arkansas National Guard to stop African-Americans from attending Little Rock Central High School.

Allen felt that he had performed well enough in 1962 to earn a promotion to the Phillies for the ’63 campaign but General Manager John Quinn had different ideas, especially after Allen had the audacity to ask for a raise. And so it was off to Little Rock to play for the Arkansas Travelers. The shy and introverted Allen had grown up in western Pennsylvania and never experienced the kind of racism he would have to put up with in Little Rock.

Unlike the way it was with Jackie Robinson, in which he and Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey formed a de-facto partnership to integrate the majors, nobody asked Dick Allen if he wanted to be the first African-American star in Little Rock.

“I didn’t want to be a crusader. I kept thinking, ‘Why me? Why do I have to be the first black ballplayer in Little Rock.'”

— Dick Allen (Baseball Digest, “The Human Side of Richie Allen,” Dave Nightengale, 1972)

In Little Rock, Allen received countless death threats and was often stopped by the police for no apparent reason. The experience frightened the 21-year old Pennsylvanian and he nearly quit the game. He was talked out of quitting by his mother, by his older brother Coy, and by third base coach Joe Lonnett, who also was from western Pennsylvania and had officiated some of Dick’s high school basketball games.

On the field, Allen was moved to left field, his fourth different position in professional baseball. At the plate, Allen continued to wallop and forced an eventual big-league promotion. He hit 33 HR with 97 RBI and posted a slash line of .289/.341/.550 for the Travelers; he was voted by the fans as the team’s MVP.

Allen made his Major League Baseball debut on September 3rd with the Phillies in Milwaukee against Hank Aaron and the Braves. After a strikeout and double-play groundout in his first two at bats, Allen doubled in the 7th in a losing effort. Overall, he hit .292 with 2 RBI in 25 plate appearances in his first MLB cup of coffee.

1964 (Phillies): .318/.382/.557, 29 HR, 91 RBI, 162 OPS+, 8.8 WAR

Dick Allen, at the age of 22, finally became a full-time big leaguer in 1964. Continuing a trend, Allen was asked to play third base, his fifth different position in five years. To be sure, manager Gene Mauch didn’t put Allen at the hot corner just for yucks or for his defensive wizardry. 25 different players had taken turns at third for the Phillies in the previous 5 years. The best of the bunch (Don Demeter) had been traded in the off-season for future Hall of Famer Jim Bunning. Allen ended that revolving door, starting all 162 games at the hot corner in ’64.

Allen would commit 41 errors at third (leading the N.L.) but lived up to the hype with his bat. Besides the numbers you can see in the headline, Allen led all 20 MLB teams with 125 runs scored and 13 triples. With 38 doubles, his 352 total bases were the most in the senior circuit. Although he hit like a man, he couldn’t shake the nickname Richie, conferred upon him by Philadelphia’s scribes. “It makes me sound like I’m 10 years old,” he complained.

It could have been a glorious summer and early fall in Philadelphia. As of August 27th, Allen (with All-Stars Johnny Callison (RF), Bunning, and lefty Chris Short) had led the Phillies to a 7-game lead in the National League over the Cincinnati Reds.

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Philadelphia’s Late Summer and Fall of Discontent

With the Phillies on a road trip in Pittsburgh on August 28th, their home city of Philadelphia erupted with three days of race riots that killed two people and left 339 wounded. During the riots, protesters burned several businesses owned by white people close to Connie Mack Stadium. In Nathanson’s book, he references a Philadelphia Tribune article in which a protester is quoted saying “the only thing I regret about the riot was that we didn’t burn down the goddamned stadium.” Nathanson notes that the majority of black residents didn’t feel that way but the scars of those days would linger for the rest of the ’64 season.

When the Phillies returned to Philadelphia (for a game on September 1st), only 13,306 fans were in attendance. The Phils won that night (thanks in part to an inside-the-park homer by Allen) but the riots had indelibly changed the atmosphere and way the fans treated the team’s rookie. While Phillies’ fans should have been celebrating their young star and the likelihood of the team’s first pennant since 1950, they turned their ire on him simply because of the color of his skin.

It wasn’t the first time Allen had been booed at Connie Mack Stadium but Sport magazine journalist Arnold Hano noted that the crowd booed any time a ball was hit to Allen and every time he came to bat, generating a sound that he called “deep-throated, almost frightening.”

“Although he quite obviously played no role in the riot himself and had been up to that point silent when it came to the city’s racial politics and dynamics, Dick Allen, through the color of his skin and the way he spoke his mind, had become the symbolic face that unleashed white anxiety and discontent with the changing complexion of the city in the wake of the riot.”

— Mitchell Nathanson (God Almighty Himself)

The Slump of All Slumps

After the first post-riot home game at Connie Mack Stadium, Gene Mauch’s Phillies were victorious in 10 of their next 17 contests. After that, however, the team went into a slump that remains infamous to this day. On Friday, September 18th in Los Angeles, Philadelphia had a 3-0 lead late in the game but the Dodgers tied the score with 3 runs in the bottom of the 7th and then won it in the bottom of the 9th. The next night the Dodgers won in 16 innings. Bunning pitched a complete game on Sunday to avert a three-game sweep at Dodger Stadium.

The Phillies returned home on Monday to start a 7-game homestand against Cincinnati and Milwaukee. Dick Allen hit .467 in those 7 games with a home run, 5 RBI, and a 1.217 OPS but the team lost all 7 games, often in excruciating fashion. Most painful was a Friday night loss to the Braves. The teams were tied at 3 after 9 innings; in the top of the 10th Joe Torre hit a two-run HR to give Milwaukee the lead. In the bottom of the frame, Allen responded with a two-run homer of his own (another one of the inside-the-park variety) to tie the game. Sadly for the Philly faithful, the Braves scored two more in the top of the 12th to win 7-5.

Two days later, the Braves completed a four-game sweep when Bunning got pounded for 7 runs in 3 innings in the worst start of his inaugural season in Philly. By the time the homestand had ended, the Phillies were one game behind Cincinnati after having been 6.5 games ahead of St. Louis and 7.5 in front of the Reds just 10 days prior.

Allen and the Phillies went on the road for the final five games of the season. The Phils were swept by the eventual World Champion Cardinals before winning the last two games of the season in Cincinnati, which assisted in the Redbirds’ final one-game edge over both Cincy and Philly for the N.L. pennant.

All told, during Philadelphia’s 10-game losing streak, Allen hit .415 with a 1.076 OPS so he can hardly be faulted for the epic collapse. In the final game of the season, in which the Phillies still had a chance to tie St. Louis with a victory and Cardinal loss, Allen went 3 for 5 with 2 HR and 4 RBI while Bunning tossed a shutout in a 10-0 victory. Unfortunately for Mauch’s Phils, the Cards beat the Mets that day.

Despite the team’s September collapse, Allen did win the Rookie of the Year Award and finished 7th in the N.L. MVP voting. Because of gaudier HR and RBI totals (31, 104), teammate Johnny Callison finished 2nd to the Redbirds’ Ken Boyer in the MVP vote despite an OPS 130 points less than Allen’s.

1965 (Phillies): .302/.375/.494, 20 HR, 85 RBI, 145 OPS+, 6.4 WAR

The numbers speak for themselves. Dick Allen had an excellent sophomore campaign. He made his first All-Star squad (voted in as the starter at third base), played in 161 games, and contributed 31 doubles, 14 triples, and 15 stolen bases to go with his 20 taters.

Allen’s sterling second season was marred, however, by a mid-season fight with veteran utility-man Frank Thomas. There’s something about that name for a Major League Baseball player that seemingly requires a big man. The more famous Frank Thomas (the “Big Hurt”) was listed at 6’5″ and 240 pounds; he hit 521 HR, won two MVPs, and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2014. The Frank Thomas of this story is listed on his Baseball-Reference page at 6’3″, 200 pounds and was called the “Big Donkey” by his Philadelphia teammates.

The older Thomas (now 91 years old) was best known for his years with the Pittsburgh Pirates, with whom he made three All-Star teams and finished 4th in the 1958 N.L. MVP voting. By July 1965, Thomas was a 36-year old utility player; the Phillies were the 5th team he had suited up for since a January 1959 trade to Cincinnati. During his career (1951-66), the right-handed-hitting slugger hit 286 HR in 6,285 at bats, the 14th most homers in all MLB during those years.

The Fight

Thomas, on July 2nd, had struck out in a pinch-hitting appearance after unsuccessfully trying to bunt with runners at the corners. According to Nathanson’s book (in which he quotes Allen himself from his autobiography Crash), Thomas swung and missed during batting practice the next day, after which Callison said “Hey Lurch! Why don’t you try to bunt instead?” (The “Lurch” moniker was in reference to Thomas’ resemblance to the large manservant on The Addams Family).

What happened next is that Thomas said something to Allen, who was standing next to Callison near the cage. The accounts of exactly what Thomas said differ depending on who tells the tale but whatever he did say, it was perceived by Dick as a racist remark. Allen then went into the cage and hit Thomas in the chest; the Big Donkey responded by swinging his bat, hitting Allen in the left shoulder. Allen then retaliated with a barrage of punches before the two large and strong players could be separated by their teammates.

In the game after the brawl, Philadelphia lost that night despite a bases-clearing triple by Allen and a game-tying pinch-hit homer by Thomas. Still, not wanting any ill will between teammates to fester, the Phillies put Thomas on waivers after the game. In the immediate aftermath of the fight, Allen and his teammates were prohibited from talking about it but Thomas, no longer on the team, was free to tell his side of the story. He said that Allen had “cost me my job” and claimed that he had tried to apologize. And so Dick Allen became the villain.

Regardless of where the truth lies, many Phillies fans took Thomas’ side and booed Allen relentlessly, with some throwing things at him from the stands. He was cheered when he doubled and tripled in a 1-0 victory against Pittsburgh and when he hit a mammoth grand slam the next night against San Francisco but then the booing resumed. Allen and his wife received death threats.

As the late Philadelphia Daily News writer Bill Conlin told filmmaker Mike Tollin, the Phillies “let 2 million people come up with their own version of what happened. It was a catastrophic event in Allen’s career and in the history of the ball club.”

“Richie Allen could have been the greatest player that ever played the game… The incident that happened… was just an unfortunate thing… The fans of Philadelphia crucified him because they liked me.”

— Frank Thomas (as told to Mike Tollin, reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer, July 2015)

For the season, the Phillies finished with an 85-76 record, finishing in 6th place in the National League, 11.5 games behind the pennant-winning Los Angeles Dodgers.

Note: Tollin, the acclaimed filmmaker responsible for “The Last Dance,” has been working on a Dick Allen documentary for years and had hoped to release it in 2022 if Allen had been elected to the Hall of Fame. With Allen falling a vote shy of the Hall of Fame again, the timetable for the release of Tollin’s opus is unknown.

1966 (Phillies): .317/.396/.632, 40 HR, 110 RBI, 181 OPS+, 7.5 WAR

Dick Allen’s 1966 season was one of the best of his 15-year MLB career. The 40 HR total was the most of his career and the 2nd most in the league to Henry Aaron. Those 40 dingers were accumulated in just 141 games, thanks to a shoulder injury. Besides driving in 110 runs, Allen also scored 112 in the injury-shortened campaign. His .632 slugging percentage and 1.017 OPS were the best in the N.L.

The injury that short-circuited Allen’s 1966 season occurred on April 29th in Wrigley Field on a successful steal attempt of 2nd base. X-rays showed a severe bruise and slight dislocation of his right shoulder.

Allen had four pinch-hitting appearances before returning to the lineup on May 27th in San Francisco. Because Allen’s injured shoulder limited his throwing ability from the hot corner, Gene Mauch played his slugger in left field, figuring it was the best place to hide Allen defensively while keeping his bat in the lineup. The “hiding” part of Mauch’s plan didn’t work as well as the “keeping the bat in the lineup” part.

In the first several weeks of his return to action, Allen couldn’t throw the ball more than about 50 feet. To compensate, the players who manned the shortstop and third base positions would sprint out to left field on any ball hit in that direction, serving as a super-short-range cut-off man. As Frank Dolson of the Philadelphia Inquirer put it in his June 3rd column, shortstop Bobby Wine was the “most valuable sprinter to hit town since Bob Hayes was in the Penn Relays.”

Exactly 10 weeks after injuring his right shoulder, Allen returned to third base and started all but one game at the hot corner for the Phillies for the rest of the season. In what was a stellar campaign with the bat, Allen had two walk-off home runs in the span of three weeks. On August 1st, Allen hit another inside-the-park homer to give the Phillies a 6-5 win over Houston; in this case, Allen’s cause was aided by Astros’ center fielder Jim Wynn crashing into the outfield wall, a collision that would sideline Wynn for the rest of the season.

18 days later, against the Mets, Allen ended the game in the bottom of the 10th with a massive wallop that cleared the first advertising sign atop the left-field roof. The tater was his 30th of the season and ranked (according to the Inquirer‘s Allen Lewis) among the hardest and longest he had hit in his first three years at Connie Mack Stadium.

For the season, Philadelphia finished in 4th place in the N.L. while Allen finished 4th in the MVP voting, earning one first-place vote while finishing behind Hall of Famers Roberto Clemente, Sandy Koufax, and Willie Mays.

1967 (Phillies): .307/.404/.566, 23 HR, 77 RBI, 174 OPS+, 5.3 WAR

In what was an almost-annual tradition, Dick Allen held out of training camp in the spring of 1967 in search of a better contract. After his monster 1966 campaign, Allen felt that he had to be paid. Allen’s demand was reportedly for $100,000, an unprecedented amount for a fourth-year player. The 25-year old superstar’s negotiating tactics befuddled General Manager John Quinn in that Allen refused to negotiate. It was only one year earlier that recently elected Hall of Famer Marvin Miller (another baseball figure that didn’t live long enough to enjoy his induction ceremony) had taken over what was a previously ineffective MLB Players Association. In 1967 there were no arbitration rights for a player embarking on his fourth season.

Ultimately, team owner Bob Carpenter intervened and caved to his superstar (as he had in a previous holdout). The result was an $85,000 deal, which made him the highest-paid player on the team. The total was $5,000 more than Jim Bunning’s deal; the 13-year veteran was coming off a magnificent season of his own. According to the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin (as reported in Nathanson’s book), Allen’s contract made him the highest-paid player in the history of the Phillies, the highest-paid fourth-year player in baseball history, and also the highest-paid 25-year-old in the game’s history.

Even though Allen’s 85k seems like a pittance compared to today’s salaries, it was still approximate to what $650,000 would be today. It was plenty to live on and, for Allen, it gave him the freedom to set his own rules and not follow those set by manager Gene Mauch. If Allen wanted to skip batting practice and show up shortly before game time, he would simply pay the fine imposed by Mauch. After all, he could afford it.

Still, the boo birds at Connie Mack Stadium clearly expected superhuman feats from their $85,000 star: Stan Hochman of the Philadelphia Inquirer compared the boos in Philadelphia to wine: “each year’s harvest had its own unique characteristics.” He noted that the 1967 version “was noticeably thicker” and contained an “envious grumbling noise because Allen had held out for a huge raise.”

Still, despite his frequent tardiness to the ballpark, Allen was always ready for the first pitch. He missed only 5 innings in the team’s first 78 games, getting lifted early in a couple of blowouts. On July 8th, however, on the day it was announced that Allen would be the N.L.’s starting third baseman in the All-Star Game, Mauch benched his slugger for showing up late. The next day, in the last game of a 10-game homestand, Allen took batting practice and was back in the starting lineup.

“I Don’t Want to be a Superstar”

In the game itself, Allen hit a mammoth game-tying home run (estimated at 500 feet) in the bottom of the 8th, helping the Phillies to a 4-3 extra-inning win over the Cardinals. As reported by the Inquirer‘s Allen Lewis, “the ball cleared the center-field fence about halfway between the flagpole and the light tower.” Lewis also noted that Jimmie Foxx had cleared the fence in that location in the 1930s: “the fence at that time was only 10 feet high. It is now 32 feet high and Allen’s ball left the park at a height of at least 40 feet, and is the first ball hit out of the park to the left of the light tower since the fence height was raised.”

After the game, Allen sat at his locker and talked to the assembled reporters, something he did not often do. He did his best to explain himself to the scribes who didn’t feel like he cared enough about the game.

“I don’t want to be a superstar…. I hate anybody with a hammer over my head. I don’t think I could handle a eight-to-five job… I know my own responsibilities. I gotta do things as I see fit… I know lots of times when I’m late for anything it costs me. I know it costs me. But I’d rather not give reasons.”

— Dick Allen (July 9, 1967)

Two days later at the Mid-Summer Classic in Anaheim, Allen hit a solo home run to lead off the 2nd to give the N.L. a 1-0 lead. Tony Perez replaced Allen in the 10th inning and famously won the game 2-1 with a solo blast off Catfish Hunter in the top of the 15th.

Allen played every inning of each of the Phillies’ next 42 games but the boos continued. Among his most notable batting exploits was a three-run opposite-field walk-off home run in the bottom of the 12th inning of a mid-August game against the Chicago Cubs. After the game, he told the media that he wanted to “get out of Philadelphia.”

Unfortunately, Allen’s season came to an end eight days after his walk-off heroics and his public trade request. He cut his right hand and wrist while he and a friend were pushing a stalled ’55 Ford he was tinkering with. The accident severed two tendons and the ulnar nerve and could have been career-ending if the cuts had been more severe.

Even in his injury-shortened season (122 games played), Allen’s productivity was noticed by the writers, who gave him enough votes to place 19th in the MVP balloting.

1968 (Phillies): .263/.352/.520, 33 HR, 90 RBI, 160 OPS+, 3.5 WAR

In the spring following his severe wrist injury, Dick Allen definitely needed batting practice but in his typical independent style preferred to do it on his own time, using a coin-operated batting range. Because of concerns of his ability to throw with his healed right hand (not to mention the 35 errors he committed at the hot corner in 1967), the Phillies moved Allen back to left field for the ’68 season.

Due to concerns about the injury, Quinn wanted to give Allen a conditional contract based on his ability to hit at his previous level but Carpenter intervened again, giving Allen his same salary without conditions. That accommodation did not change Allen’s desire to get out of the city that showed him so little brotherly love.

The issues of the 1967 season (the incessant booing and the feud with manager Gene Mauch) got worse in the 1968 campaign. Additionally, Allen, with his right hand and wrist, not fully healed and sensitive to cold weather, struggled to repeat his magnificent offensive production of the previous four seasons. In the first 18 games of the season, Allen had a respectable 3 HR with 13 RBI but an uncharacteristically weak slash line (.250/.281/.467). Twice in late April, the 26-year old slugger was relegated to pinch-hitting duties because the cold pained his surgically repaired hand.

The Dick Allen-Gene Mauch Feud Comes to a Head

On the last day of April, Allen wasn’t in the starting lineup but it wasn’t because of the cold or his right hand. For a Tuesday afternoon game at Shea Stadium in New York, the Phillies’ left fielder did not arrive at the stadium until 20 minutes before game time. For this, Mauch removed him from the lineup. Two days after the benching, Allen began an 18-game hot streak in which he slashed .344/.461/.557, culminated by a 3-run, 450-foot blast to right-center field on a late May Sunday afternoon in St. Louis.

Upon the team’s return to Philadelphia, the Allen-Mauch relationship went off the rails, ultimately ending with Mauch’s dismissal just under three weeks later. The drama started when Allen showed up late for a Wednesday night twilight double-header (May 29th), the twin bill necessitated by a rainout the night before. Even though he showed up late, Allen was penciled into the lineup for both games. He was benched, however, on Friday and sent home on Saturday by coach George Myatt because of noticeable liquor on his breath.

Although it wasn’t reported to or by the media for over a week, either Mauch had essentially suspended his mercurial slugger on a day-to-day basis or Allen was deliberately holding himself out of games in protest to the manager’s rules and fines. Allen was out of the lineup for an entire seven-game road trip to San Francisco and Los Angeles, with the disaffected slugger seemingly campaigning openly for a trade to the Giants. As Bill Conlin describes the bizarre events to Mitchell Nathanson (in the book God Almighty Himself), after the first inning of each game at Candlestick Park, Allen would walk out to the outfield and chat up Jimmy Ray Hart, Willie Mays, and Ollie Brown before sitting down with the Phillies’ bullpen crew.

This is one of those tales in which it seems that both sides of the story had kernels of truth. Regardless, Carpenter intervened, reducing Allen’s fines and ordering Mauch to return him to the lineup. On Tuesday, June 11th, Dick Allen was batting 3rd for the Phillies. Of course, Allen marked his return by launching a deep opposite-field home run off the Astros’ Larry Dierker. A few days later, in what seemed like a “him or me” scenario oft-repeated in sports history, Gene Mauch was fired.

New Skipper, New Rules

Philadelphia’s new manager (Bob Skinner) took over the reins on June 16, 1968. At 36, Skinner was just two years away from his days as a player. In 1967 he had led the Phillies’ AAA team (the San Diego Padres) to the Pacific Coast League title. Although Skinner (an ex-Marine)  was a believer in setting rules, he was also eager to get along with the team’s superstar in this, his first big league managerial job. As for that superstar, Dick Allen initially started testing the waters with his new skipper by wearing his batting helmet on the field, something Mauch had prohibited.

Allen immediately went on a tear for his new manager, slashing .356/.414/.754 with 12 HR and 27 RBI in the first 30 games of Skinner’s tenure. The team won 17 of those 30 games but were not really in contention, with the St. Louis Cardinals running 11 games ahead in the pursuit of the N.L. pennant. Notable during the hot streak were two solo home runs Allen hit off future Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan (then just 21 years old) on July 15th at Shea Stadium. After an opposite-field tater in the first inning just beneath the scoreboard, Allen slammed the Ryan Express for a monster blast high approximately 50 feet above ground level off the light tower in left-center field. Phillies reliever and math whiz Dick Hall, who saw the blast from the bullpen, estimated it to be a 472-foot shot.

However, starting with a 0 for 6 performance in a 12-inning loss on Monday, July 16th, Allen went into one of the worst hitting slumps of his young career. In 27 games, he slashed a mere .133/.243/.256 with 3 HR and just 8 RBI. The Phillies lost 19 of those games and any hopes at the pennant were gone.

Philadelphia finished in 7th place in the N.L., 21 games behind St. Louis. As for Allen, he played in all 107 games for his new manager and finished with a bang, hitting 3 home runs with 7 RBI in the season finale against the New York Mets at Shea.

1969 (Phillies): .288/.375/.573, 32 HR, 89 RBI, 165 OPS+, 3.7 WAR

Dick Allen still wanted to get out of Philadelphia but was back with the Phillies for the 1969 campaign. Management was unable to work out an acceptable trade, with the New York Mets being one of the teams most often mentioned publicly as a potential suitor. It’s little wonder that the Mets had some interest; nobody on the ’68 Mets had hit more than 15 taters and the Wampum Wallopper owned a 1.043 career OPS against New York, with 25 HR in just 338 at bats.

In late March, Allen switched positions once again, this time from left field to first base. Having never been fond of playing left, Allen was happy to move to a position close to the dugout. Allen didn’t exactly make anybody forget about Gil Hodges as a defensive specialist at first (he was second in the N.L. with 16 errors) but it was clearly the position to which he was best suited, especially since his right shoulder had never fully recovered from his injury in 1966. That same shoulder caused him to miss six games in April but, overall, it was a good opening month for the now 27-year old star (he slashed .346/.404/.673 with 3 HR and 10 RBI).

On May 2nd, Allen missed the team’s early morning flight to St. Louis and then missed another flight later in the day; ultimately he didn’t show up in St. Louis until 25 minutes into the Phillies’ second game of the series. When asked about it, he was hardly apologetic: “Those early flights are no good. The traffic’s bad… They had a chance to get rid of me last winter and they didn’t. It’s their fault.” Allen was fined for missing those two games but, other than that, did not face any consequences for his absence.

Upon returning to the lineup, Allen continued to punish the baseball, posting a 1.082 with 16 HR and 36 RBI in his next 40 games. But on June 24th Allen missed an entire doubleheader in New York. Skinner’s patience ended; he suspended his slugger indefinitely without pay. Skinner had accepted the fact that there would be rules for 24 players and a different set for Allen but missing games was what Skinner called “one of the biggest felonies that can happen.” Allen would later blame his absence on bad traffic but he was defiant when learning of his suspension, telling Stan Hochman of the Philadelphia Daily News, “good, I need a vacation.” He also vowed he would never play for the Phillies again.

Dick Allen’s “vacation” lasted a month (he missed 31 games in total). During his suspension, Allen disappeared.

“I cut myself off from everybody, including my family… The sportswriters were tracking me as though I were a mass murderer, but I covered my tracks well.”

— Dick Allen, in his autobiography Crash

As he had during various contract disputes, team owner Bob Carpenter intervened and, by agreeing to trade Allen in the off-season, convinced his star to return. Allen was back with the Phillies on July 20th, the same day Neil Armstrong took “one small step for mankind” by walking on the moon. Teammate Cookie Rojas quipped “this must be the greatest day in baseball history. The astronauts come down on the moon and Richie Allen comes down to earth.”

Carpenter, who reduced the daily fines Allen had been accumulating, was lambasted in the press for being too accommodating to his rebellious player. Skinner, who had gotten off to a good start with his temperamental star, resigned a few weeks later when Allen decided to skip an exhibition game. “Now I know what Gene Mauch went through,” said Skinner. “You can fine Allen and he just laughs at you. He negotiates with the front office, makes his own private agreement and it’s like handing the money right back to him. I don’t want to go on managing this club under the circumstances.”

By his normal lofty standards, Allen slumped in his final 51 games for Philadelphia, slashing just .257/.355/.444 for interim manager George Myatt. Towards the end of what was a lost season (the Phillies lost 99 games overall), Allen started doodling with his cleats in the dirt around the first base bag. One night, in what was either a joke or a provocation to the Philly fans who loved to voice their displeasure, he “wrote” the word BOO.

Five days after the conclusion of the ’69 campaign, Carpenter kept his word. The Phillies dealt their best player to the St. Louis Cardinals in a six-player deal that sent Tim McCarver and Curt Flood to Philadelphia. Famously, Flood (a 6-time Gold Glove center fielder) refused to report to the Phillies. Flood wound up suing Major League Baseball in the landmark case that eventually paved the way to players finally gaining free agent rights.

1970 (Cardinals): .279/.377/.560, 34 HR, 101 RBI, 146 OPS+, 2.3 WAR

The marriage between the St. Louis Cardinals and Dick Allen should have been one made in heaven. This was a franchise that had won 3 of the previous 6 N.L. pennants and already had two established African-American stars, future Hall of Famers Bob Gibson and Lou Brock. Gibson in particular, at 34 years of age, was one of the game’s top players. For Allen, who “never wanted to be a superstar,” being an ensemble member in a bigger cast should have been perfect. The Redbirds now had the big power bat they were lacking.

Although he never wanted to be a superstar, when it came to his salary demands Allen very clearly wanted to be paid like a superstar. He initially asked for $150,000, which would have made him the highest-paid player in the game of baseball. Owner August A. Busch was not impressed. With the 25-year old Steve Carlton also holding out, Busch did something that Bob Carpenter never did: he simply renewed the players’ contracts unilaterally. It was “take it or leave it” and, ultimately, Allen decided to “take it” to the tune of $90,000.

Even in new surroundings, Allen couldn’t shake the nickname he didn’t like. Bob Broeg, the legendary writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The Sporting News, noted that the new Cardinal “likes to be called Dick” but referred to him as “Richie Allen” nonetheless.

With the Cardinals, Allen played mostly at first base but started the season back at the hot corner because of a life-threatening kidney disease that had afflicted Mike Shannon.

In his Redbird debut, playing in Montreal against Gene Mauch’s Expos, Allen went 3 for 5 with 2 doubles and a game-tying home run in the top of the 8th, helping St. Louis to a 7-2 victory. When the Cards played their home opener in St. Louis two days later, the team’s new #3 hitter received a standing ovation. In his third game at Busch Stadium, Allen blasted a 450-foot tater off future Hall of Famer Tom Seaver to the back of the left-centerfield bullpen. He blew kisses and tipped his cap to the adoring fans.

Allen showed his flair for the dramatic when the Phillies came to town, giving the right-handed-hitting slugger his first opportunity to face his former mates. In a pitching matchup of future Cooperstown inductees (Bunning and Carlton), the two Hall of Famers matched zeroes until the bottom of the 9th inning. The first two batters reached against Bunning, bringing Allen to the plate. Allen proceeded to hit an 0-2 pitch over the right-centerfield wall for a 3-run walk-off home run.

The next night against his former mates, Allen went 2 for 3 with 4 RBI which included a towering upper-deck 2-run blast. According to Bill Conlin of the Philadelphia Daily News, the ball didn’t stop climbing until it ran into an obstruction that happened to be “the concrete facing of the upper deck about 80 feet high.”

Ten days later the Cardinals traveled to Philadelphia, giving Allen a reunion with the “adoring” fans at Connie Mack Stadium. Although the Redbirds would lose Allen hit a 9th inning homer to delight (or annoy) the Philly faithful. Two days later Allen hit two long balls (torching Bunning on both again), driving in all three runs in a 3-0 victory.

At the All-Star Break, Allen had 25 HR and 72 RBI and was voted the starting first baseman for the National League for the Midsummer Classic, barely beating out future Hall of Famer and reigning N.L. MVP Willie McCovey for the honor.

Despite the strong first half by Allen, Red Schoendienst‘s Cardinals overall were a disappointment, hitting the break at 9.5 games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates in the N.L. East. The Redbirds would not contend for the rest of the 1970 campaign. Even so, after 117 games, Allen had 33 HR to go with 100 RBI and a .926 OPS. Unfortunately, in the second game of an August 14th doubleheader, Allen pulled his right hamstring.

It was initially believed that the injury would keep Allen out for 7 to 10 days but, as it is so often with hamstring pulls, it kept him on the shelf for much longer; Allen missed virtually the entirety of the rest of the season. After a couple of pinch-hitting outings in late August, Allen was able to start in two games on September 8th and 9th. The first of those starts were in Connie Mack Stadium, which was scheduled to be replaced in 1971 by Veterans Stadium. In his final bat in the ballpark, he called home for six often miserable seasons, Allen hit an 8th inning home run off Rick Wise into the left-centerfield bleachers. After blowing kisses to his fans/tormentors, Allen exited the game and was gone before the Philly scribes could query him about his last hurrah.

Allen played the next two nights before being shut down for the rest of the campaign. Even though he missed 40 games, Allen led the Cardinals in home runs and RBI. Despite that level of productivity, four days after the end of the season he was traded again, this time to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

As Mitchell Nathanson noted in God Almighty Himself, quoting pitcher Jim Brosnan, Cardinals owner Gussie Busch “neither forgets nor forgives” and possibly forced the trade, not wanting to deal with another spring training holdout. Additionally, there were rumors of dissension in the Cardinals clubhouse, with manager Red Schoendienst later telling General Manager Bing Devine “you wanted him — I didn’t.”

Devine said all the right things (“if there was any major problem of morale, I’m not aware of it”) but the value St. Louis received in return for Allen (second baseman Ted Sizemore and backup catcher Bob Stinson) does provide circumstantial evidence that the Redbirds were trading from a position of weakness. The company line was that the Cards needed a new second baseman (true) and that Sizemore (the 1969 N.L. Rookie of the Year and a .306 hitter in 1970) was the best available.

1971 (Dodgers): .295/.395/.468, 23 HR, 90 RBI, 151 OPS+, 5.4 WAR

Dick Allen was stung at having been discarded by the Cardinals after just one season but also enjoyed putting on the Dodgers’ uniform for the first time. At his introductory press conference, he noted that his family would head to Forbes Field in Pittsburgh every time the Dodgers came to town and that it was “special” to put on the uniform of the team that broke the color barrier.

Whether he would fit within the culture of future Hall of Fame manager Walter Alston‘s clubhouse was another matter. Alston had allegedly once threatened to quit if the Dodgers ever acquired the controversial star but backtracked once it actually happened. One source of perennial conflict was resolved early when Allen signed his 1971 contract (for $105,000) in November 1970.

As it was throughout his career, where to play Allen was an issue. The Dodgers clearly needed his power bat (the team hit 87 HR in 1970 compared to Allen’s 34 in three-quarters of a season in St. Louis) but already had a first baseman. Wes Parker was a 4-time Gold Glover who had finished 5th in the 1970 N.L. MVP voting thanks to a career year with the stick (.319 BA, 10 HR, 47 doubles, 111 RBI). Alston and the Dodgers wanted to give the first crack at the hot corner to future 10-time All-Star Steve Garvey so Allen started the season in left field.

The 22-year old Garvey, however, wasn’t ready for prime time either offensively or defensively so Allen wound up back at the hot corner in late June. Allen continued to struggle defensively at third; his 15 errors were 5th in the N.L. despite the fact that he only played 67 games at the position. Offensively, Allen got off to a terrible start, slashing .230/.340/.370 with just 4 HR and 20 RBI in his first 40 games in Dodger Blue. The team went 18-22, putting them 11 games behind the San Francisco Giants in the N.L. West.

Starting on May 27th, Allen and the team warmed up but were still just 3 games over .500 and 8.5 games behind after 105 games. For the balance of the season, however, the team started chipping away at the Giants’ lead and Allen was in a pennant race for the first time since 1964. The team won 35 of its last 57 games and finished a heart-breaking one game behind the Giants in the division chase. Overall, Allen’s home run total was down (23 in 155 games) but he still produced a 151 OPS+, while leading the team in multiple offensive categories (HR, RBI, walks, on-base%, and slugging%).

Still, the shy and introverted star never quite fit in with the “Dodger Way,” specifically in respect to his late arrivals to the ballpark and in his resistance to the team’s efforts to involve him in public relations. In December, he was traded for the third time in three falls, this time to the Chicago White Sox. In this case, the Dodgers got real value in return with future Hall of Famer Frank Robinson and future 288-game winner Tommy John coming to L.A. in a three-team deal.

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Trade to Chicago

The decision to trade Dick Allen, based on his personality rather than his production, was one that the Dodgers would rue, at least for the 1972 season. Unlike the way it was with Red Schoendienst and Walter Alston, Allen’s new manager on Chicago’s south side (Chuck Tanner) was genuinely excited at the prospect of having Allen on his team. Tanner lived in New Castle, PA, about eight miles from Allen’s hometown of Wampum. Tanner knew both Dick and his mother and played basketball against Dick’s older brother Coy when he was growing up. Tanner, who would win the 1979 World Series with the Pittsburgh Pirates, was a “player’s manager.” In many ways, he was the skipper Allen needed because he believed in treating each player differently, according to that player’s experience, skill, and needs.

A couple of days after the trade, team General Manager Stu Holcomb boasted that the club already had over $100,000 in season ticket sales, a comment that Allen likely noticed. The constant contract squabbles that Allen had in his career were in part due to his keen awareness that he was a star that sold tickets and that, even when he extracted what was top dollar at the time, the team owners made far more money from his efforts than he did.

The White Sox offered Allen a 5% raise over the $105,000 he had made in 1971 and also, as a goodwill gesture, became the first team to officially recognize the star’s preferred first name “Dick.” It seems odd today that it took eight MLB seasons for a superstar to be called what he preferred but that’s what happened. The name “change” was welcome to Allen but the salary offer was not. Upset at being asked to move his family again, Allen contemplated quitting the game. He went silent for months and was a spring training holdout for 41 days until signing for $135,000 on April 1, 1972.

1972 (White Sox): .308/.420/.603, 37 HR, 113 RBI, 199 OPS+, 8.6 WAR

Two weeks after inking his new contract and playing his best position (first base), Dick Allen started his White Sox career with a bang, launching a go-ahead 9th inning home run in what turned out to be a losing effort. Eight days later, he hit his first home run in Comiskey Park, finishing his first 8 games with the Chisox with a .452 batting average and 1.288 OPS. Three days later, Allen hit an upper-deck walk-off 2-run tater to give Chicago its 7th straight win. A couple of days after that, in a losing effort, Allen hit an opposite-field upper deck blast at Tiger Stadium that the Chicago Tribune‘s George Langford estimated would have traveled 450 feet.

One of the highlights of the first half of the season for Allen and the White Sox was in the second half of a Sunday doubleheader against the New York Yankees. Tanner elected to keep his star first baseman out of the lineup for the nightcap, giving a breather to a player who had played every inning of the team’s first 41 games. Allen never expected to appear in the second game but was summoned to bat in the bottom of the 9th inning when left-handed reliever Sparky Lyle was brought out of the bullpen to protect a 4-2 lead with two runners on base. Allen swatted the first pitch into the upper deck for another walk-off home run. One of Allen’s teammates told the story this way:

“(Dick was) sitting in the whirlpool, buck naked, drinking J&B right out of the bottle… Cut to the ninth inning and we’re getting him dressed and Dick has no idea where he is… So Dick gets up there and (Ed Hermann and I) are going ‘oh my god, he’s got to hit and he can’t even see; he’s half in the bag.’ Sparky Lyle was known for throwing first-pitch breaking balls, and he threw him a great curveball and Dick swung and hit it into the upper deck. Now Dick runs to first base and he stops… He had no idea he hit a home run. No clue whatsoever. He ran to every base and stopped… Only a couple of us knew that he’d been in there with the J&B and drank half the bottle.”

— Jay Johnstone, White Sox outfielder (in Mitchell Nathanson’s God Almighty Himself)

Allen’s fast start in Chicago earned him the starting nod at first base for the American League; he was the overall leading vote-getter in the fan vote for the A.L. He went 0 for 3 in the Mid-Summer Classic but smashed two home runs in the team’s first game after the break. On the last day of July, Allen hit another two home runs (in Minnesota) but neither one left the yard. He legged out two inside-the-park home runs off future Hall of Famer Bert Blyleven, driving in 5 runs in the process.

That game sparked a 12-game run for Chicago in which they won 10 games to pull into a first-place tie in the A.L. West with the Oakland A’s. During that 10-2 run, Allen was responsible for another walk-off with an RBI double against the Texas Rangers. On August 23rd, Allen hit a massive blast into the elevated center field bleachers that was estimated at 460 feet to lead the Chisox to victory and first place in the division.

The White Sox were in first place in the West as late as August 28th but the A’s won 24 out of their final 35 games to win the division by 5.5 games. Allen “slumped” down the stretch with 21 RBI and a .894 OPS in his final 27 games. Once the team had been mathematically eliminated from postseason contention, Tanner gave his star the final six games off.

Allen finished the season as the American League’s leader in home runs, RBI, walks, and slugging percentage and led all Major League Baseball with his .420 OBP and (in modern metrics) his 199 OPS+. In November, Allen was named the Most Valuable Player of the A.L. He earned 21 out of the 24 possible first-place votes and was voted second by the three writers who chose somebody else. He even showed up at Comiskey Park to acknowledge the honor.

1973 (White Sox): .316/.394/.612, 16 HR, 41 RBI, 176 OPS+, 2.9 WAR

After his dominant MVP campaign, the White Sox and Stu Holcumb rewarded Dick Allen with the largest contract in the history of Major League Baseball, a three-year deal worth an estimated $675,000. Even if the amount seems paltry by modern standards, the contract was still worth $3.8 million in today’s dollars and, on its $225,000 annual basis, gave Allen a salary even higher than Hank Aaron’s.

Anyway, the contract would turn out to be the trigger event that would sour the honeymoon between the White Sox and their first baseman. That souring happened on two fronts. First of all, Holcumb in part paid for Allen’s salary by squeezing salary concessions from many of his teammates. Additionally, as has happened countless times in the decades since, the media became obsessed with the dollars.

On the field, nothing was wrong initially as the 31-year old Allen continued to hit like a future Cooperstown inductee. He homered on Opening Day for the second year in a row and had 5 HR with a .323 BA and 1.103 OPS after his first 16 games. The White Sox enjoyed a 9-game winning streak at the end of April and beginning of May and spent most of May and June in first place in the A.L. West.

Allen’s flair for the big moment showed itself on a Monday night late in May when he hit a walk-off 3-run homer in the bottom of the 21st inning, completing a game that had been suspended in the 17th two nights earlier. When the White Sox began a West Coast road trip on June 27th, they were just a half-game out of first. Their reigning MVP was slashing .315/.396/.626 with 16 HR and 41 RBI.

Unfortunately, Allen’s season essentially ended on June 28th when he fielded a high throw at first base and collided with the California Angels’ Mike Epstein. The collision resulted in a hairline fracture of Allen’s left fibula. The initial diagnosis was that Allen would miss between one to four weeks but as it turned out the fracture all but ended his ’73 season. With the injury occurring late in June, Allen was once again the A.L.’s leading vote-getter in the balloting for the All-Star Game even though he was unable to play.

Allen returned on July 31st and went 3 for 4 but was unable to start the next day and was relegated to pinch-hitting appearances the next two nights. Two days after Allen’s second effort off the bench, still with significant pain in his leg, Tanner speculated that his star slugger might miss the rest of the season, that there was no use “jeopardizing his career.” The White Sox were now out of contention and Tanner’s words were prophetic. Three weeks later it was official. Allen was done for the season.

1974 (White Sox): .301/.375/.563, 32 HR, 88 RBI, 164 OPS+, 3.8 WAR

As was his wont, Dick Allen skipped chunks of spring training in 1974, logging just six at bats. Unlike so many springs of the past, however, this wasn’t about a contract dispute; he was in the second year of his mega-deal. This time, he was simply wondering if he wanted to keep playing baseball, telling the Chicago Tribune‘s Robert Markus that he almost called it quits on Opening Day in Chicago. In a headline that foreshadowed the future, Markus’ piece was entitled “Allen almost quit Friday, he may yet.” Without really explaining why the player who often appeared self-centered told Markus that he was concerned that he was hurting the team and Chuck Tanner in particular.

Retirement would have to wait for a bit. Allen had another great first half (slashing .302/.369/.601 with 26 HR and 70 RBI). For that effort, he was once again selected as the American League’s starting first sacker for the All-Star Game.

Given that the game was being played at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh (not far from Allen’s hometown of Wampum), this should have been the “Dick Allen All-Star” game. The individualistic and private player, however, wanted none of it. He was nowhere to be found on Monday (deciding to spend his off day in Kentucky for a yearling auction), then skipped the commissioner’s luncheon on Tuesday as well as the pre-game workout. He finally arrived at the park 42 minutes before the start of the game. He went 1 for 2 with an RBI single in his last appearance in the Mid-Summer Classic.

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The Chisox hit the All-Star break in 2nd place in the A.L. West (5 games behind the two-time defending World Series champion Oakland A’s) but lost 5 of their first 6 games after the break to fall permanently out of contention. Even as the team faded, Allen continued to rake, slashing .341/.419/.598 in his first 23 games after the break. However, with his shoulder bothering him and a mostly unknown (at the time) right Achilles tendon injury, Allen’s productivity waned. From August 23rd to September 8th, Allen hit just .205 with no extra-base hits in 47 plate appearances.

With the shoulder pain now spreading to his lower back, Allen missed the next several games. On Friday, September 13th he met with White Sox owner John Allyn and told him he was thinking about quitting the game. Allyn did not try to talk him out of it. In March 1978, the Tribune‘s Richard Dozer reported that Allyn told his star player simply, “by no means is this slavery. You can go anytime you want to.” And so, the next night, the 32-year old slugger tearfully told his teammates that he was retiring. It was a decision that Dick Allen would later call the “biggest mistake of my life.”

Even though he hit his final home run in a White Sox uniform on August 16th, Allen still finished the season as the A.L. home run leader with 32. In this, his final season as a productive hitter, his .563 slugging percentage led all Major League Baseball.

Despite telling his teammates he was going to “hang them up,” Dick Allen did not officially retire although the White Sox did put him on the “voluntary retired list.” Even so, it seems clear that the myriad of injuries that Allen had suffered to his hand, leg and shoulder were starting to wear him down physically. Sometimes in baseball, a player’s productivity falls off a cliff. So it was for Allen. He would play parts of three more seasons but he would never again perform at the All-Star level of his peak.

Philadelphia Story Part II

It will come as no great surprise that Dick Allen’s retirement didn’t last long. On November 11th, a reporter caught up with Allen at Keystone Race Track near Philadelphia and he quipped, “everybody says I’m retired except me.” The Los Angeles Times’ headline was also a quip of sorts: “Dick Allen Announces Retirement From His Recent Retirement.”

Allen in fact never officially retired but he had successfully burned his bridges in Chicago. Manager Chuck Tanner, who had given Allen more rope and covered for him more than any skipper he had ever played for, was nonplussed, saying “it would be awfully difficult for him to come back to Chicago.” That opinion was shared by the team’s management and thus efforts ensued to try to trade the A.L.’s reigning home run champion. Because of his hefty salary and mercurial personality, virtually every MLB team was unwilling to make a deal. Finally, in early December, the White Sox traded Allen’s rights to the Atlanta Braves for a mere $5,000 and a player to be named later.

A few weeks after the trade, Tanner predicted that Allen would break Roger Maris‘ home run record by playing half of his games at Atlanta Fulton County Stadium (the “Launching Pad”). However, 11 years removed from his miserable season in Little Rock, Allen had no interest in playing in the south and refused to report to his new team.

In something that must have seemed like a Twilight Zone episode to baseball fans at the time, in early February Allen Lewis of the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that two members of the Phillies (Dave Cash and future Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt) had secretly visited Allen’s farm in Perkasie to convince him to play again for his original team. According to Lewis’ reporting, Allen warmed to the idea of coming back given that the team had several other talented young players and looked like a potential contender.

1975 (Phillies): .233/.327/.385, 12 HR, 62 RBI, 94 OPS+, -0.5 WAR

The reunion between Dick Allen and the Phillies took several months to come to fruition but, on May 7th, he was traded with catcher Johnny Oates to the Phils in exchange for outfielder Barry Bonnell, catcher Jim Essian and $150,000. (Essian was subsequently sent to Chicago as the player to be named later for the original Allen trade).

With Philadelphia having dispatched Willie Montanez to San Francisco three days earlier, the team had already cleared the decks for their former star to play his best position, first base. Although Montanez had slugged 30 home runs as a rookie in 1972, he only managed 31 more in the three full seasons that followed; they expected more pop from Allen. Ironically, Montanez wound up having the better year, finishing 1975 with a .302 BA, 10 HR, and 101 RBI compared to Allen’s .233, 12 taters, and 62 ribbies. The deal did ultimately benefit the Phillies, however, because the player they received from the Giants was center fielder Garry Maddox, who would go on to win 8 Gold Gloves.

Anyway, the city of Philadelphia was ready to embrace their former slugger. He made his debut at Veterans Stadium on May 14th to thunderous applause. When the public address announcer read the lineup and got to “batting fifth, number 15” the cheers were so loud that he never finished reading the rest of the lineup.

“Seven-fifty-six p.m. Richie Allen came to bat in a Phillies’ uniform at the Vet for the first time. He approached the plate and the cheers came crashing down, louder and louder until you have to expect the stadium lights to dim and the man with the number 15 on his back to blow kisses to the crowd and sing two choruses of ‘God Bless America.'”

— Frank Dolson, The Philadelphia Inquirer: “The Boos Turn to Cheers for Richie Allen” (May 15, 1975)

Allen singled in that first at bat (he finished 1 for 3) and the Phillies won 4-0 thanks to a 7-hit shutout by Allen’s former Cardinals’ teammate Steve Carlton. Overall, however, Allen got off to a terrible start with the bat, slashing .176/.309/.221 with no homers and just 6 RBI in his first 21 games of the season. He finally broke out of his slump on June 7th with two solo taters at the Vet off the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Doug Rau. Those two long balls sparked an 18-game surge in which he slugged .538 but his batting average at the end of those 18 games (.241) was the highest it would be all season.

Even with their slumping first baseman hitting .220 as of August 18th, manager Danny Ozark‘s Phillies were tied with the Pittsburgh Pirates atop the N.L. East. Starting with a walk-off loss in Atlanta the next night, however, the team lost 13 out of 20 games to fall 7 games behind and out of contention. Allen posted a .768 OPS with just 1 HR and 5 RBI during the team’s swoon.

With 18 errors at first base (the most in the N.L.) and his lowly slash line (.233/.327/.385), the modern metric Wins Above Replacement valued Dick Allen’s 1975 campaign as below replacement level. Ironically, in the season in which he stopped hitting like a future Hall of Famer, there was no drama off the field. At the conclusion of a three-game series at Shea Stadium in late September, Allen said that he was happy all season long for the first time in his career. The happy talk came after a series in which he hit a tie-breaking home run in the 8th inning of one game and 2 doubles with 2 RBI in another.

1976 (Phillies): .268/.346/.480, 15 HR, 49 RBI, 131 OPS+, 0.7 WAR

Even though he didn’t have a signed contract for 1976, Dick Allen, always the contrarian, reported to spring training on time. After Allen’s sunny season in Philadelphia in 1975, the first storm clouds formed at the end of March when his close friend and financial advisor Clem Capozzoli suddenly died of a heart attack. Allen’s disposition changed for the worse after the death of the man he regarded as a father figure.

After staying mostly healthy (if unproductive) in ’75, the injury bug bit Allen again in ’76. A late April slide at second base resulted in a strained rotator cuff in his right shoulder and a trip to the disabled list.

Upon his return to the lineup, Dick Allen started hitting like the Allen of old. In a 39-game stretch, he slashed .317/.368/.599 with 10 HR and 29 RBI. The Phillies went 27-12 during Allen’s hot streak, helping them to a 9-game lead in the N.L. East. His bat cooled a bit in July but still, the Phils found themselves up by 13 games as of July 25th. It was on that Sunday that Allen had a collision with Pirates pitcher John Candelaria, a big man at 6’7″, 230 pounds. Teammate Greg Luzinski noted that Allen could barely lift his right arm after the game.

Complaining of dizziness and other soreness, Allen called in sick on Monday and then essentially disappeared for a few days. On Friday, July 30th the Inquirer had a big headline on the front page declaring “Phillies’ Dick Allen is among the missing again.” This was the top story in the entire newspaper, not just the sports page. Ozark, Carpenter, and General Manager Paul Owens all agreed that Allen should be fined for being AWOL. In his first tour of duty in Philadelphia, this might have lingered for weeks as a huge scandal. However, on the day of the Inquirer‘s headline, Allen showed up at Shea Stadium and immediately patched things up with Ozark. The team put him on the disabled list retroactively, essentially canceling his fine.

While Allen was on the shelf and for the first few days after his return (on September 4th), the Phillies slumped badly, going 21-26 while their lead dwindled to four games over the Pittsburgh Pirates. For his part, Allen returned to the lineup and immediately went into a terrible hitting funk, going 2 for 33 in his first 9 games back. After a walk-off loss to the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field on Friday the 17th, the once insurmountable lead had dwindled to just 3 games. If Phillies fans were starting to see the ghosts of 1964, one could hardly blame them.

N.L. East Champions

This Philadelphia team, unlike its ’64 counterparts, turned it around down the stretch. The team won 13 of its final 16 games to finish with 101 wins, capturing the N.L. East by 9 games. For his part, Allen posted a .900 OPS with 2 HR and 7 RBI in his final 11 appearances of the season.

The Phillies clinched the division in Montreal after winning the first half of a doubleheader. As the team was in the Jarry Park locker room celebrating the franchise’s first postseason appearance since 1950, Dick Allen sat on the bench by himself, later having a small celebration with Schmidt, Cash, Maddox, and Bobby Tolan.

In what was truly an unneeded controversy of his own making, Allen announced that he would not participate in the playoffs unless his longtime friend, veteran infielder Tony Taylor, was also on the postseason roster. Taylor, who was Allen’s teammate in Philly throughout his turbulent times, was now 40 years old and had only appeared in 26 regular-season games in what would be his final MLB campaign. Ultimately, the Phillies and Allen struck a bargain (known as the “Pekasie Compromise”) in which Taylor would be a part of the playoffs as a coach.

The Phillies were matched up in the NLCS against the defending World Champion Cincinnati Reds. In the only postseason opportunity of his career, Allen went 2 for 9 (both hits were singles) with 3 walks. He also made a key 2-run error when he failed to snare a line drive by Tony Perez in the 6th inning of Game 2. Two runs scored on the play, turning a 2-1 lead into a 3-2 deficit. The Phillies were swept in 3 games.

A few days after the sweep, the Phillies signed Danny Ozark to a 2-year contract extension with Ozark confirming that Allen would not be back with the team in 1977. Three weeks later, for the first time in his career, Dick Allen was officially granted free agency.

1977 (Athletics): .240/.330/.351, 5 HR, 31 RBI, 89 OPS+, 0.2 WAR

Allen, who fought (and mostly won) so many times with management in contract squabbles, was finally free to sign with any team that would have him just in time for virtually nobody to want his services. Although he had a respectable season with the bat in 1976 (15 HR in 85 games with a .480 slugging percentage), the controversies that always followed him made Allen damaged goods throughout the game. At this time in baseball history, the onset of free agency, there was a “free agent draft” in which teams would declare their interest in negotiating with a player. Only one team selected Allen, the Oakland A’s.

One might imagine that a match between Allen and the A’s tight-fisted owner (Charles O. Finley) would be a match made in hell but, with no other options, Allen agreed to a one-year contract for an estimated $150,000 in the middle of March. The A’s, three-time World Champions from 1972-74, lost virtually all their star players in the 1976-77 off-season due to free agency and Finley’s unwillingness to pay market value for those stars.

Wearing the number 60 and Wampum on his back (in honor of his high school graduation year), Allen got off to an excellent start in Oakland. In April, he slashed .313/.395/.507 with 4 HR and 22 RBI in just 21 games. A couple of weeks later, Allen hit what would be the final home run of his career, a 9th inning game-tying blast off the Yankees’ Ron Guidry in a game the A’s would ultimately lose.

Shortly thereafter, Allen went into a deep slump. He slashed a woeful .140/.241/.160 in his final 17 games in baseball. Ultimately, Allen played in 54 games for Oakland before Finley suspended him after finding him showering in the clubhouse during the sixth inning of a game in Chicago (this was a game in which he was not in the starting lineup). A few weeks later Allen sent Finley a letter stating that he was “retiring from baseball for the rest of 1977.”

Not quite ready to actually retire, Allen was back in camp with the A’s in the spring of 1978 but he never got into a game and was officially released on March 28th.

Dick Allen finished his 15-year playing career with 351 home runs. At the time, 351 taters were the 29th largest total in Major League Baseball history. As of the end of 1977, there were 344 MLB players who had accumulated at least 6,000 plate appearances. Despite batting in hitter-unfriendly ballparks and spending his best early years in one of the most pitching-dominated eras since the 1910s, Allen’s career slugging percentage (.534) was the 18th best all-time among those 344 players. The 17 men ahead of Allen on the all-time slugging list (as of 1977) would all in the Hall of Fame by 1982. Nearly 40 years later, fans of Allen are still waiting.

Cooperstown Doesn’t Come Calling for Dick Allen

Dick Allen hit the Hall of Fame ballot in December 1982 which, in retrospect, was terrible timing. Earlier in the year, the scribes of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) inducted Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson into the Hall. While the Veterans Committee was inducting players like drunken sailors, the BBWAA had a hard time coming to a consensus on all but the most obvious picks. From 1973-82, the writers elected a grand total of 13 men into Cooperstown, including 6 members of the 500 home run club.

374 ballots were cast in the vote whose results were revealed on January 12th, 1983. Only 14 writers voted for Allen, including Bud Burns of The Tennessean:

“No doubt of it, Allen will be ignored by many voters because he didn’t have a gift for communication with managers or sportswriters. But there is no way his credentials can be ignored… There are many selectors who consider Allen a ‘bad guy.’ Certainly he was no angel. But neither were a lot of other guys who were enshrined in Cooperstown… Like the others, Allen should be judged by what he did between the white lines. If he is, he will eventually make it. Few have played the game better.”

— Bud Burns (The Tennessean, January 7, 1983)

The writers elected Brooks Robinson and Juan Marichal on that 1983 ballot while Allen’s 3.7% percentage was the 25th most and so low that he would not appear on the 1984 ballot. Publicly, at least, he was not bothered by the snub, saying “I’m more interested in getting into heaven than getting into the Hall of Fame.”

By today’s rules, Allen’s 3.7% would have made him one and done on the Hall of Fame ballot. The Hall, however, was still a few years away from enforcing the zero-tolerance, uncompromising 5% rule that exists today. So, Allen was back on the ballot from 1985 to 1997.

Alas, The Walloper from Wampum did not fare much better on those next 13 ballots, topping out at 18.9% in 1996, far short of the 75% required for induction into Cooperstown.

Allen was subsequently on three Veterans Committee ballots (receiving little support) before falling one vote shy of Cooperstown on the ill-fated Golden Era ballot of December 2014.

Why Dick Allen Never Got Close to the Hall of Fame

As noted at the beginning of this piece, Dick Allen’s chief credential for Cooperstown is his career OPS+ of 156. Even to this day, for players with at least 6,000 career plate appearances, that ballpark, and era-adjusted OPS is tied for the 15th best in the history of baseball. The only players with a higher OPS+ who are not in the Hall of Fame are Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, both excluded because of their use of Performance Enhancing Drugs.

But, of course, OPS+ didn’t exist when Allen was on the BBWAA ballot. Voters mostly cared about batting average, home runs, RBI, hits, and stolen bases. Allen’s BA was solid (.292) but his 351 career HR and 1,848 career hits were uninspiring. As Hall of Fame expert Jay Jaffe has often noted, the BBWAA has not elected anyone to the Hall with fewer than 2,000 hits who debuted since Jackie Robinson. What the voters could have (and should have) noticed was his .534 slugging percentage, 19th best for players with at least 6,000 PA when he first hit the ballot. That .534 SLG was higher than contemporaries Willie McCovey, Willie Stargell, Harmon Killebrew, Reggie Jackson, Billy Williams, and 96 others who were or would later become Hall of Famers.

Still, even if you forget about the controversy that swirled around Allen throughout his career, it’s completely understandable that the writers from 1983-97 didn’t see a Hall of Famer when they looked at his candidacy. Sure, he won an MVP trophy but plenty of players did that who never got close to Cooperstown. He only managed 40 home runs once and only drove in 100 runs three times.

Remember, OPS did not exist when Allen was on the ballot. Keeping that in mind, take a look at Allen’s numbers in comparison to other players who were Allen’s contemporaries or retired in time to be eligible for the ballot while Allen was on it:

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On this list, Dwight Evans and Dave Parker retired after the 1991 season and were both on the ballot for the first time in 1997, when Allen was on it for the final time. The comparison to Parker is interesting. Like Allen, he won an MVP trophy playing for Chuck Tanner. Unlike Allen, he won a World Series. Unlike Allen, he played long enough to log 10,184 PA (with 2,712 hits). The Cobra got 17.5% of the vote on the ’97 ballot while Allen received a 16.7% tally.

Take a moment to look at the names and numbers on the list above. Other than barely having the highest batting average, is there anything here that distinguishes Allen from the others? None of these 10 men got remotely close to Cooperstown via the BBWAA.

Of course, what you do not see on this graphic is Allen’s .534 SLG (the second highest is Frank Howard’s .499). What you also will not see here is that Allen’s .378 OBP is best on the list as well. And it’s pretty clear that a significant majority of the writers didn’t see those numbers in their brains either.

Why Dick Allen Belongs in the Hall of Fame

Today, with Baseball-Reference and sabermetrics, we know things that the BBWAA members from 1983-97 did not. We have OPS+, the one statistic that combines a player’s ability to get on base with his ability to hit for power, adjusted for ballparks and the friendliness or unfriendliness of the eras in which he played.

Allen’s 156 OPS+ is tied for the 15th highest in MLB history among the 690 players to log at least 6,000 career plate appearances. Here is the list.

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There is more: other than Bonds, Big Mac and Manny Ramirez, every eligible player with at least 6,000 PA and an OPS+ of 145 or above have plaques in Cooperstown. Therefore, Allen is not just at the borderline, he’s way past it. A career OPS+ of 156 is ridiculously good. And, of course, his 165 OPS+ from 1964-74 was the best in all of baseball.

Now, it is fair to point out that Allen’s career OPS is high in part because he didn’t have as many decline years in which most players (in their late 30’s) build their counting stats while their rate stats sag. So, I created another leaderboard on Stathead in which I cut off each player’s career at the end of their age 35 season to provide an apples-to-apples comparison with Allen. To be sure, Allen’s rank suffers when doing this but his OPS+ is still tied for 23rd best (with Frank Robinson) through his age 35 campaign.

There are 8 new names ahead of Allen that were not on the previous list: they belong to Albert Pujols along with Hall of Famers Nap Lajoie, Roger Connor, Willie McCovey, Hank Aaron, Joe DiMaggio, and Mel Ott. (If you’re noticing that the ranking numbers aren’t adding up, it’s because McGwire, Mize, and Hank Greenberg didn’t have 6,000 PA through their age 35 campaigns).

No matter how you slice it or dice it, Allen’s 156 OPS+ is a rock-solid Hall of Fame-caliber statistic.

10-year leaders in OPS+ (1901-2019)

Next, allow me to put into perspective the significance of having the highest OPS+ for a decade or more. I’m going to use 10 years as a benchmark because it’s a nice round number. I went back through baseball history on Stathead to find the leader in OPS+ for each 10-year period among players who logged at least 5,000 PA for those years.

There are only 25 players from 1901-2021 who have led the majors in OPS+ for a 10-year period. Here is the list:

• Nap Lajoie (once) (1901-10)
• Honus Wagner (3 times) (1902-11, ’03-12, ’04-13)
• Ty Cobb (10 times) (1905-14 thru 1914-23)
• Rogers Hornsby (twice) (1915-24 & ’16-25)
• Babe Ruth (11 times) (1917-26 thru ’27-36)
• Lou Gehrig (4 times) (1928-37 thru ’31-40)
• Jimmie Foxx (twice) (1932-41 & ’33-42)
• Mel Ott (4 times) (1934-43 thru ’37-46)
• *Bill Nicholson (3 times) (1938-47 thru ’40-49)
• Stan Musial (9 times) (1941-50 thru ’49-58)
• Mickey Mantle (10 times) (1950-59 thru ’59-60)
• Frank Robinson (twice) (1960-69 & ’61-70)
• Hank Aaron (once) (1962-71)
• Dick Allen (3 times) (1963-72, ’64-’73 & ’67-’76)
• Willie McCovey (twice) (1965-74 & ’66-75)
• Willie Stargell (3 times) (1968-77 thru ’70-79)
• Reggie Jackson (3 times) (1971-80 thru ’73-82)
• Mike Schmidt (7 times) (1974-83 thru ’80-89)
• Wade Boggs (twice) (1981-90 & ’82-91)
• Rickey Henderson (twice) (1983-92 & ’84-93)
• Barry Bonds (14 times) (1985-94 thru ’98-07)
• Albert Pujols (7 times) (1999-08 thru 2005-14)
• Miguel Cabrera (twice) (2006-15 & ’07-16)
• Joey Votto (twice) (2008-17 & ’09-18)
• Mike Trout (3 times) (2010-19, ’11-20, & ’12-21)

With the notable exception of Bill Nicholson, Bonds, and the still-active players, this is a list of Hall of Famers plus Dick Allen.

Why does Nicholson lead in OPS+ three times? It’s because Johnny Mize and Ted Williams missed 3 years each due to their military service during World War II. If you reduce the PA minimum to 4,000 to make them eligible, Mize would be the leader from 1938-47, Williams from 1939-48, and 1940-49. Nicholson does not make the top 5 with the lower standard.

10 Years with an OPS+ of 160 or more

Next, to pour some more concrete into the “Dick Allen for the Hall of Fame” foundation, let’s take a look at the significance of what it means to lead all of baseball in this category for 10 full seasons. Allen’s OPS+ was 164 from 1963-72 and 165 from 1964-73. (Allen’s OPS+ from 1967-76 was “only” 157 because it included his weak ’75-76 campaigns but it was still best in the bigs for those 10 seasons).

There are two questions here:

1. Is it just a statistical fluke that Allen led the majors for three distinct 10-year periods?
2. How rare is it for a player to post an OPS+ of 160 or greater for a decade?

Let’s tackle #1 first. As previously noted, Bill Nicholson led all of baseball in OPS+ for three consecutive 10-year periods. Nicholson was a good hitter (132 career OPS+) but certainly not a Cooperstown-caliber player. In this case, yes, of course, it was a statistical fluke. In my research study, I required at least 5,000 PA for each 10-year period to make sure that all qualifiers would need to have played full-time for at least 8 of those 10 seasons. That’s why the 5,000 PA minimum eliminated players like Mize, Williams, and Joe DiMaggio for this research project; each of these Hall of Famers missed 3 years from 1943-45 due to the war.

When Allen led baseball in OPS+ for three distinct 10-year periods, there was no intervening event that messed with the minimums.

Now, let’s look at what it means to log an OPS+ of 160 or more for 10 consecutive campaigns. Not all the names shown on the list in the previous section led the majors for a decade while also posting 160 or better. For example, excluding Nicholson’s sub-140 years, Rickey Henderson “only” posted an OPS+ of 144 from 1983-92. That was somewhat of a statistical fluke, to lead for a decade with an OPS+ that “low.”

So, this is the list of players who logged an OPS+ of 160 or better for 10 years (since 1901 and with the number of 10-year periods in which they did it). In total, there are 27 players on this list, ranked by the number of 10-year periods in which they accomplished the feat:

• Ty Cobb (13 times) (1905-14 thru ’17-26)
• *Barry Bonds (12 times) (1987-96 thru ’98-07)
• Babe Ruth (11 times) (1917-26 thru ’27-36)
• Hank Aaron (11 times) (1955-64 thru ’65-74)
• Tris Speaker (10 times) (1907-16 thru ’16-25)
• Stan Musial (10 times) (1941-50 thru ’50-59)
• Mickey Mantle (10 times) (1950-59 thru ’59-68)
• Lou Gehrig (9 times) (1923-32 thru ’31-40)
• Rogers Hornsby (8 times) (1915-24 thru ’22-31)
• Jimmie Foxx (8 times) (1926-35 thru ’33-42)
• Willie Mays (8 times) (1952-61 thru ’59-68)
• Frank Robinson (7 times) (1959-68 thru ’62-’71, ’64-’73, ’66-’75)
• *Albert Pujols (7 times) (1999-08 thru ’05-14)
• Willie McCovey (6 times) (1961-70 thru ’66-75)
• Mel Ott (5 times) (1929-38 thru ’32-41, ’34-43)
• Frank Thomas (5 times) (1989-98 thru ’93-02)
• *Manny Ramirez (5 times) (1996-05 thru 2000-09)
• Honus Wagner (4 times) (1901-10 thru ’04-13)
• *Dick Allen (4 times) (1963-72 thru ’66-75)
• Nap Lajoie (3 times) (1901-10 thru ’03-12)
• *Mike Trout (3 times) (2010-19, ’11-20 & ’12-21)
• *Shoeless Joe Jackson (twice) (1910-19 & ’11-20)
• *Miguel Cabrera (twice) (2006-15 & ’07-16)
• Eddie Collins (once) (1906-15)
• Harry Heilmann (once) (1921-30)
• *Mark McGwire (once) (1990-99)
• Jeff Bagwell (once) (1990-99)

*Not in the Hall of Fame

Besides Allen, there are 7 other players on this list who do not have plaques in Cooperstown: Bonds, Pujols, Ramirez, Jackson, Cabrera, McGwire, and Trout. Almost any baseball fan would predict that Pujols, Cabrera, and Trout are destined for Cooperstown 5 years after they retire. Bonds, Ramirez, and McGwire have those pesky PED links. Shoeless Joe was implicated in the Black Sox scandal of 1919.

That leaves Dick Allen alone on this list as a retired player not linked to PEDs or fixing the World Series who is not in the Hall of Fame.

Allen’s 11-year Peak (1964-74)

Allow me to put the cherry on top of Allen’s Hall of Fame resume. There are generally two ways that players achieve the status of Hall of Famer. The first (and obvious way) is to have a long and productive career, to be among the all-time leaders in statistical categories like home runs, hits, stolen bases, wins, or strikeouts. The second way is to have a dominant peak. Sometimes that peak can be as short as 6 seasons, such as Sandy Koufax’s peak from 1961-66. Slugger Ralph Kiner (a less obvious Cooperstown pick than Koufax) falls into this category too: he finished his career with just 369 home runs but led the N.L. in taters for the first 7 seasons of his career.

Allen never logged the milestone numbers that would have put him into the Hall of Fame decades ago but he does belong by virtue of his peak. When it comes to peak performance for a Hall of Famer, 7 seasons is often enough. Allen’s lasted a full 11 campaigns.

Besides his dominance in OPS+, which I have beaten like a drum, allow me to share how he ranked in a variety of other statistical measurements during his 11 years of excellence:

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Incidentally, thanks to his various injuries (and some suspensions), Allen just ranks 14th from 1964-74 in total plate appearances, and yet he is still in the top 7 of HR, RBI, and Runs and 3rd in Extra-Base Hits. What’s also interesting (and not on this chart) is that Allen ranks 15th in the base-running component of WAR. Allen was not a big base-stealer (132 career SB) but he was known throughout his career as a fast and technically proficient baserunner.

Anyway, is it just me or does Allen’s presence among these other names prove the argument that he deserves a Hall of Fame plaque?

The Case Against

OK, it should be clear by now that I believe that the late Dick Allen deserves a spot in Cooperstown. But there is a reason why he is not there it and it isn’t only because nobody had ever thought of combining on-base% and slugging% into a single number. Allen’s career “counting” stats (351 HR, 1,119 RBI, 1,848 Hits) don’t leap off the page.

On the 10-year OPS+ list we showed you earlier, the players above Allen on the list all had long and prolific careers, logging over 9,000 plate appearances while playing into their late 30’s or early 40’s while Allen was finished at 35. Excepting the players from the “Dead Ball Era” (prior to 1919), all of the legends on the list above Allen went on to slug 493 or more home runs.

Allen never reached the normal Hall of Fame slugging milestones for two reasons. The first is that his myriad of injuries accelerated his aging curve. That’s part of life and part of baseball. There are many current or recently retired players (Johan Santana, David Wright, and Dustin Pedroia) who looked like Hall of Famers while they were playing but injuries shortened their careers. Santana was one and done on the 2018 Hall of Fame ballot while the fates of Wright and Pedroia remain to be seen.

The second reason, of course, is that Allen restricted his late-career playing opportunities because of the various run-ins he had with management. There can be no sugar-coating this. Hardly any team wanted Allen in the 1974-75 off-season even though he was the reigning A.L. home run champion. When Allen was a free agent after a respectable 1976 campaign, only Charley Finley was interested. Allen may have been shot physically but, even so, he might have been able to hang around for a few more years as a platoon first baseman (or DH if he would have accepted that role). If so, he might have eclipsed 400 home runs and 2,000 hits.

As of the end of the 1980 season, there were just 19 players who had hit at least 400 taters. If Allen had stuck around long enough to be the 20th member on that list, would Hall of Fame voters have looked more favorably upon his career?

Is the 10-Year OPS+ Stat Overrated?

Allow me to play devil’s advocate and make another argument against the Allen Cooperstown candidacy. I have made a big deal about Allen being the 10-year leader in OPS+ for multiple cycles. That prompts an obvious question. Are there other examples of statistics in which a non-Hall of Famer player was the leader for 10 years? The answer is “yes.”

Let’s take RBI as an example: while researching the Hall of Fame case for Joe Carter (who was on the 2019 Eras Committee ballot) I compiled a list of 10-year RBI leaders. From 1984-93, no player in baseball had more RBI than Carter. Same for ’85-94 and the next three 10-year periods through ’88-’97. Carter posted 10 seasons with at least 100 RBI; only 12 players in baseball history had more, all Hall of Famers, future Hall of Famers, or “would be except for PED” players.

So, if Dick Allen’s 10-year runs as the game’s OPS+ leader make him a Hall of Famer, should Carter’s RBI dominance make him one too? The answer here is “no.” RBI, although a statistic that baseball fans of my age (54) grew up with, is a highly context-dependent stat. It’s an important one but it is the product of opportunity. Carter made the most of those opportunities (he spent most of his career as a 3rd or 4th place hitter) and is to be credited for that. However, as a hitter, Carter was one-dimensional. He hit for good power (a .464 slugging percentage that helped him drive in those runs) but did not get on base for his teammates (career .306 OBP). For that reason, he is 64th on the all-time RBI list but just 208th in runs scored.

Today we know that OPS (and its enhanced version OPS+) is the more meaningful stat.

Was Dick Allen a Bad Teammate?

In his landmark book The Politics of Glory (1994), sabermetric pioneer Bill James went beyond the numbers to write about the politics of the Hall of Fame voting process. James is not one to pull punches and, while noting Dick Allen’s statistical excellence, delivered a scathing commentary on his worthiness for Cooperstown.

“Allen never did anything to help his teams win, and in fact spent his entire career doing everything he possibly could to keep his teams from winning… He did more to keep his teams from winning than anybody else who ever played Major League Baseball. And if that’s a Hall of Famer, I’m a lug nut.” 

— Bill James, The Politics of Glory (1994)

The crux of the James argument is that Allen’s moodiness and absenteeism kept his teams from winning. This point that he made is fair: “was there a time in baseball history when a player could not show up at the ballpark once in a while without anybody making an issue of it?”

Full disclosure here: I have been a Bill James reader and huge fan since I was 14 years old when I read his 1982 edition of The Baseball Abstract. James understood the importance of on-base percentage and slugging percentage long before anybody else did. Even though OPS had not been invented yet, James had his own numbers, such as Runs Created, in which he combined the disparate elements of on-base ability and slugging. James could see Allen’s value statistically long before most others but clearly, he was troubled by the off-field issues, the word “troubled” putting it mildly. As a James disciple, my personal view about Allen and the Hall of Fame was influenced by James’ views for many years.

For the record, in the 2019 of the “Bill James Handbook,” James ranked Allen as the 9th best position player who was not in the Hall of Fame.

“I don’t advocate for Dick Allen as a Hall of Famer, but neither do I wish to belabor his failures. There is no doubt that his ability was at a phenomenal level. His ability was at the level of Joe DiMaggio and Hank Aaron.”

— Bill James (The Bill James Baseball Handbook, 2019)

Additionally, James gives Allen 577.2 points in his new “Hall of Fame Value Standard” on a scale in which 500 makes a player worthy of Cooperstown.

Did Allen Keep His Teams From Winning?

After reading Mitchell Nathanson’s heavily researched book (God Almighty Himself) and doing my own research while writing this mini-biography of Allen’s years on the diamond, I cannot say that I find any evidence that he prevented any of his teams from winning. In his rookie year (1964), Allen was the last person anyone could blame for the Phillies’ late-season collapse. As previously noted, Allen hit .415 with a 1.076 OPS during the team’s famous 10-game losing streak.

In the years that followed, Allen did not get to play for a contending team until he was with the Dodgers in 1971. In September, while the Dodgers were chasing the San Francisco Giants for the N.L. West title, Allen slashed .327/.405/.500 while his team won 18 of 27 games. Ultimately, the Dodgers finished a game shy of the Giants in the West. For the season, Allen played in 155 games and led the team in WAR, HR, RBI, and OPS+ (by a country mile). So, Allen kept that team from winning the division because he didn’t want to engage in public relations duties?

In 1972, the Chicago White Sox finished 5.5 games behind the Oakland A’s in the A.L. West. Was that shortcoming Allen’s fault, given his career-best season that netted him an MVP Award?

In 1975, the Phillies finished 6.5 games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates in the N.L. East and it’s true that Allen’s off-year was a factor in keeping the Phils from making the race closer. But, by all accounts, the ’75 campaign was Camelot when it comes to Allen’s relationship with his team, its management, and the fans. In the irony of ironies, it was his unexpectedly poor on-field performance that hurt the team in their N.L. East chase.

Was the controversy surrounding Allen’s desire to see his longtime friend and teammate Tony Taylor on the 1976 playoff roster the reason the Phillies were swept in three games by the Cincinnati Reds in the NLCS? I have a hard time seeing the connection. The Big Red Machine was simply the better team, evidenced by their subsequent sweep of the New York Yankees in the World Series.

What Dick Allen’s Former Teammates Have to Say

Mine is just an opinion, one formed after the fact by reading and researching. I was only 8 years old in 1975, completely unaware of any controversy involving Dick Allen and his teams. To me, he was an All-Star face on this 1975 baseball card.

What matters to me most are the numbers and, by the numbers, Allen belongs in Cooperstown. But, given that Allen was controversial and that his career was shortened in part by the fact that teams didn’t want to sign him late in his career, it’s fair to address the issue. I’ll go by the words of Allen’s former teammates.

Here is what Bill White (the player turned Yankees broadcaster turned N.L. President) had to say about Allen recently:

“I had the opportunity and pleasure to play with Hall of Famers Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal, and many other excellent players. Dick Allen, in my opinion, ranks with these great players. I never saw a player hustle as much as Dick Allen.

When I was traded to the Phillies in 1965, I roomed with him and was surprised by his knowledge of the opposing teams, especially the pitchers. He made me a better offensive player. As a former player, broadcaster, NL League President and a former board member of the Hall of Fame, I think Dick Allen belongs in Baseball’s Hall of Fame.”

— Bill White (Allen’s former teammate in Philadelphia)

After the December 2014 Golden Era ballot in which Allen fell a vote shy of Cooperstown, the late Jim Bunning (the Hall of Fame pitcher turned U.S. Senator from Kentucky) bemoaned the failure of the committee to vote anybody into the Hall. Bunning, who played with Allen from 1964-68, called it “the most disappointing 3 days I’ve ever spent in my life.” Bunning later told Stan Hochman of the Philadelphia Daily News that he had made a 5-minute presentation to the committee on behalf of Allen’s candidacy.

In December 2015, Graham Womack of The Sporting News interviewed several of Allen’s former teammates and concluded that Allen “might be the most maligned player in baseball history.” White Sox pitcher Wilbur Wood (who believes Allen belongs in the Hall) told Womack, “he had no enemies in Chicago, I can guarantee that.”

Regarding his time in Chicago, here is what Hall of Fame closer Goose Gossage (who was a rookie in 1972) had to say about Allen:

“He studied the game intently. I can remember being in the dugout at times when some of the White Sox players would be horsing around… Dick would suddenly pipe up with, ‘Cut the crap and get your heads in the game. Watch the pitcher. Learn something’… Allen played to win… If I were to pick an ‘All-Teammate Team’ from my career, I’d put Dick Allen at first base.”

— Goose Gossage (The Goose is Loose) (2000)

More recently, Gossage told USA Today that Allen was “the smartest baseball man I’ve been around in my life… He taught me how to pitch from a hitter’s perspective… The guy belongs in the Hall of Fame.”

Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt was 25 years old when Allen returned to Philadelphia in 1975. In a recent Philadelphia Inquirer piece,  Schmidt recalled slumping early in the season. Before an early-season game at Wrigley Field, Allen counseled Schmidt that the game was supposed to be fun and that he should stop worrying. “Darned if he wasn’t right. I ended up going 5 for 6 with 4 home runs.” Schmidt credits Allen for mentoring him and several other talented young members of the Phillies (including Greg Luzinski, Garry Maddox, Bob Boone, and Larry Bowa).

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The Endorsement of Legends

Finally, when the Philadelphia Phillies announced that they were going to retire Dick Allen’s uniform #15 in 2020, the accompanying press release offered the following quotes from some of the game’s legends about their thoughts on Allen’s Hall of Fame candidacy.

“[Dick] was a fine ball player. He did some great things and hit the ball much further than I did.
He deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.”

— Hank Aaron (as told to filmmaker Mike Tollin)

“[Dick] could hit the ball farther than anybody that I’ve seen. He was and still is, a Hall of
Famer as far as I’m concerned.”

— Willie Mays (quoted by Tollin)

Perhaps as an omen for future honors to come, Allen was just the 7th former Phillies player who will have his uniform number retired. The other six men (Schmidt, Steve Carlton, Richie Ashburn, Jim Bunning, Robin Roberts, and Roy Halladay) all have plaques in Cooperstown.

2022: The Year So Many Expected Dick Allen to Make it to Cooperstown?

When I revised this piece in the days prior to the Golden Days ballot, I predicted that the committee would posthumously elect Dick Allen to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. After 16 years (from 2002-17) in which the Veterans Committee (and its successor, the Eras Committee) failed to elect any living ex-players to Cooperstown, the various committee members are on a bit of a roll. Besides the six new Hall of Famers elected earlier this month (including Buck O’Neil and Bud Fowler by the Early Baseball Committee), Jack Morris and Alan Trammell were inducted into the Hall’s Class of 2018; Lee Smith and Harold Baines were voted in for 2019 while Ted Simmons made the Hall’s Class of 2020.

What did these recent elections have to do with the December 2021 vote? It showed me and other Hall of Fame enthusiasts that the committee members desperately did not want to repeat the failure of the 2015 Golden Era vote in which no player was elected. As noted previously, Allen and Tony Oliva got 11 out of 16 votes (one shy of the 12 needed for a plaque); Jim Kaat got 10 votes, Maury Wills 9 with Minnie Minoso getting 8 tallies.

The postponed 2022 Golden Days Committee met earlier this month to consider the candidacies of ten candidates whose primary impact on the game was between 1950-69. Although Allen’s career timeline is split between this era and the Modern Baseball Committee (which considers players from 1970-87) the Hall has decided to include him in this group. Oliva, Kaat, Wills, and Minoso all got 50% or more of the 2015 vote, were also on the 2022 ballot. Gil Hodges, who had previously appeared unsuccessfully on more Hall of Fame ballots than any player in history, was on the ballot as well.

Given that the 16 committee members are limited to voting for only 4 of the 10 candidates and that 12 votes are needed for induction, the math is hard. It’s the math that caused the abject failure of the 2015 committee. So why is it that I had such confidence that Allen would emerge from what will be a group of 10 worthy candidates? There are four reasons. The first is that the very recent history of the vote has shown that the committee members have favored men who had “just missed” in the past. (This was also a true factor of the four candidates who were actually elected).

Now, let me emphasize, this is very recent history, as in less than two years ago. Simmons received 11 out of 16 votes in December 2017, one shy of what was needed for a plaque. Marvin Miller received 11 votes in December 2010. In December 2019, the voters pushed both men over the finish line. Theoretically, that trend would accrue to the benefit of both Allen and Oliva.

The second reason, as noted earlier, is that these Eras Committees have a recent history of electing players shortly after their deaths (as it was with Ron Santo and Miller).

Other Advantages That Should Have Helped Allen

If you feel like my “they got 11 votes last time” theory was a stretch, then I offered this hope to Allen supporters. There has been a movement behind his candidacy (thanks to his friend, former Phillies groundskeeper Mark Cafagno) that did not remotely exist to the same extent for any of the other potential candidates. Perhaps many of us were just living in our Twitter bubbles but I saw much more awareness of Allen as a worthy Cooperstown candidate than any of the others, with the possible exception of the late Minoso (who was worthy as well and the leading vote-getter).

What was the more tangible cause for hope? Well, seven years have passed since the last time Allen and the others were on the ballot. In those seven years, there is more awareness of advanced metrics like WAR and OPS+, even among “old school” Hall of Famers. Mike Schmidt said as much last year: “if you go back in time and analyze Dick’s career and look at his career by applying modern-day analytics, his numbers are far and above a lot of the guys who are in the Hall of Fame.” Remember: Schmidt was in the room last Sunday making this argument when Allen’s candidacy was being considered.

Additionally, there were two other former teammates of Allen (Fergie Jenkins and Joe Torre) on this committee. I don’t know this for certain, but I’d wager good money that Jenkins was one of the “yes” votes for Allen on the 2015 ballot. The look on Fergie’s face at the December 2014 press conference when it was announced that no Hall of Famers had been elected was one of severe disappointment and disgust.

Anyway, this is a look at how Allen’s statistics stack up against Oliva, Wills, and Minoso (the other top position player vote-getters from 2015) along with Hodges, Ken Boyer, and Roger Maris, the other position-player candidates who were on the ballot.

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By modern metrics and accolades, Boyer (an 11-time All-Star and 5-time Gold Glover at third base) was also a strong candidate. Still, allow your gaze to linger on the numbers here. Only Oliva and Minoso had a higher batting average than Allen. Only Minoso had a higher on-base percentage. But Allen had by far the highest slugging percentage which is why his OPS+ is so much higher than the others.

There were non-position-player candidates, of course, Among them is Jim Kaat, a 283-game winner, Allen’s teammate in Chicago and Philadelphia as well as a man who is well-liked throughout the game. (Incidentally, shortly after Allen passed away last December, Kaat appeared on MLB Network and indicated that he thought his former teammate deserved a spot in Cooperstown).

Still, none of the names I have mentioned have an elevator pitch line like “highest OPS+ in all MLB for 11 years.” For those who don’t like or believe in the “plus” stats, here’s a handy backup: “second-highest OPS to Hank Aaron from 1964-74.”

How Did Allen Fall One Vote Short, Again?

Ultimately, the elevator pitch wasn’t enough. Dick Allen fell one vote short. From the last ballot (in December 2014), Minoso’s vote total improved from 8 to 14; Kaat went from 10 to 12; Oliva from 11 to 12. The big surprise was Gil Hodges, who had many close calls in his 34 previous times on the ballot but got no reported support on the 2015 ballot. Besides the obvious fact that the committee members this year were almost all different than the members of the 2014 committee, there was a possible wild card named Vin Scully.

“According to sources familiar with the presentations during the Golden Era meeting Sunday, the subject of the integrity/sportsmanship clause, which has been such a raging topic in the Baseball Writers elections ever since the steroid cheats began appearing on their ballot, was widely discussed when it came to Hodges. ‘You could make the case—and apparently somebody did—that no one in the game epitomized that clause more than Hodges, a quiet leader, an ex-Marine World War II hero who was universally respected by teammates and foes alike,’ said one source. ‘I think that made the difference for him, especially in this day and age.’ 

It didn’t hurt either that the venerable Hall-of-Fame Dodgers announcer Vin Scully lobbied hard behind the scenes for Hodges with a lot of the committee members. And who could say no to Vinny?”

— Bill Madden (New York Daily News, December 5th, 2021)

When Allen was left out of the Hall of Fame party, there was disappointment, bitterness, and anger among family members and passionate supporters of Allen’s candidacy. To fall one vote short, twice, is a cruel twist of fate. How did it happen? How did the best candidate on the ballot get the fifth most votes?

I can think of two possible reasons, both of which involve sheer speculation. The first possibility is that this was a tragic accident of competing priorities. Perhaps Mike Schmidt (and others) made the case that Allen belonged in the Hall. At the same time, given that the Negro Leagues were recognized as official Major Leagues by MLB earlier this year, there was a clear consensus that Minoso deserved to be honored. Simultaneously, there was a strong sentiment to elect a pair of living players (Kaat and Oliva) who had fallen just shy on the 2015 ballot. And, finally, there was the unexpected push for Hodges, whose candidacy has had more close calls for Cooperstown than any player in history.

The summer of 2022 will be the 50th anniversary of Hodges’ passing. His widow (Joan) is still alive at the age of 95. Vin Scully just turned 94 and we know that Scully was lobbying for Hodges. So, there were five candidates competing for the four votes allowed for each committee member. Were there voters who felt that Allen was an inevitable selection but that Kaat, Oliva, and/or Hodges needed every last vote? There’s no way to know but that math is darned hard to make for five Hall of Famers.

The second possible reason (a more nefarious one) is that there was a bloc of voters that chose not to vote for Allen because of his various run-ins with management during his playing career. There were six current or former MLB executives on the Golden Days committee: Bud Selig, John Schuerholz, Bill DeWitt, Ken Kendrick, Tony Reagins, and Kim Ng. Were there a handful of the “no” votes from this group? There’s no way to know for sure but it’s certainly a possibility, especially given that every voting member was limited to four choices and there were four other attractive candidates being discussed.

Final Thoughts

Life is full of choices and events that have fundamental impacts on the course of our existence. A seemingly small decision can forever change the path of our time on this planet. Just as in life, the career trajectory of every baseball player is influenced not just by the player’s talent and desire to succeed but also by on and off-field decisions and random events. One injury can turn a talented player from a future Hall of Famer into one of the thousands who fall short. Likewise, the teams for which a player toils can shape his career and have a significant impact on his future Cooperstown prospects.

It is unquestionable that Dick Allen made decisions during his playing years which had a deleterious impact on his legacy and Hall of Fame potential. It’s also possible that had Allen spent his 20’s playing for a different organization than the Philadelphia Phillies that the way he was viewed might have been entirely different.

As previously noted, Allen grew up about 45 miles northwest of Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. What if Allen had signed with the Pirates instead of the Phillies and spent his AAA season in Columbus, Ohio rather than Little Rock? Imagine Allen coming to the majors on a team with Roberto Clemente as the established star instead of to a team in which he was the star and the focus of the fans. Think of Allen breaking in with the 1964 Pirates, a team with multiple veteran black players (Clemente, Bob Veale, Al McBean, Donn Clendenon, Manny Mota), and a 24-year old Willie Stargell.

Let’s take this in a different direction. Imagine a universe where Allen’s life proceeded exactly as it did in the real world but that the New York Mets had selected him in the expansion draft in October 1961. In New York, he would have played in a city whose National League fans had cheered for Robinson and Mays.

Here is another one: what if there had not been a race riot in Philadelphia in late August 1964. What if the Phillies had not blown that 6.5 game lead in September, won the N.L. Pennant and defeated the New York Yankees in the World Series? How would Allen’s tenure in Philadelphia have transpired? How differently would his legacy be viewed if he started his career as the best player on a World Series champion?

Finally, how would Dick Allen be viewed if he had played in the ESPN era? I’ve seen it written that Allen belongs in the Hall of Fame because he hit so many tape-measure home runs. By itself, that’s a silly argument if you pause to think about it. Dave Kingman hit a lot of bombs too. But if you put together the entire package of Allen’s career numbers and combined it with visual images of some of his titanic blasts, would that have changed how some people looked at his career? Baseball historian Bill Jenkinson has argued that, in terms of pure power, only Babe Ruth displayed more pure power than Allen in the history of baseball, with Mickey Mantle, Jimmie Foxx, and Frank Howard arguably deserving to be in that conversation. If only we could go to YouTube and watch some of his titanic blasts.

Dick Allen was indeed a controversial player. He had the talent equal to the game’s all-time greats and does not have the career statistics to match. That is why he does not yet have a plaque in Cooperstown. So many of us expected that status to change with the Hall’s Class of 2022. But it was not to be. We’ll all have to wait until the December 2026 ballot, which will consider players for the Class of 2027. Given that Minoso, Oliva, Kaat, and Hodges have been “cleared” off that future ballot by getting plaques in Cooperstown next summer, the path should be wide open for Allen to make it.

Even though he is no longer on this earth to enjoy the honor, an eventual plaque will bring great meaning to his family and to his legions of fans. It’s an honor richly deserved even if seriously delayed.

Thanks for reading. Please visit Cooperstown Cred on Twitter @cooperstowncred.

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