Dick Allen

Dick Allen has died.

Allen was possibly the best hitter in baseball for the first decade of his career (My friend and Philadelphia Phillies fan Steve has calculated that he actually had the highest OPS in the major leagues from 1964 through 1973).

His rookie season in 1964 was one of the greatest rookie years ever, and he won a deserved MVP award with the White Sox eight years later. (Allen’s stats are superficially less eye-popping than they might otherwise be because his prime years were at the height of the worst era for hitters in the last century of MLB).

I had forgotten that Allen was the other main player in the Curt Flood trade in 1969, that was the basis of a particularly ridiculous SCOTUS decision, in which Harry Blackmun held that Americans love baseball so much that it can’t survive without special economic protections.

Allen was a controversial figure in his day. He played minor league ball in the early 1960s in Little Rock, Arkansas, which I can just imagine was a very special place for a moody Black ballplayer at the time (“Moody” was white sportswriter code at the time for Black players who didn’t smile enough in a suitably deferential fashion). In 1965 he got into a clubhouse fight with Frank Thomas, a white teammate who was probably more racist than average, and who had the poor judgment to hit Allen with a bat, which for obvious reasons is a big no-no in regard to the Unwritten Code of Clubhouse Fights. Thomas was released the next day, which is no surprise given he was a journeyman near the end of his career and Allen was the team’s biggest star, but a lot of Philadelphia fans were upset, because they were super racist and they blamed the uppity colored kid for tangling with the scrappy beloved veteran with the blue collar ethic.

These fine folks subsequently expressed their displeasure by throwing items such as batteries at Allen when he was in the field, leading him to don a batting helmet while playing third base. ETA: Josh Slocum reminds me that the press called Allen “Richie” for several years at the beginning of his career, even though he hated that name and had never used it himself. When he finally insisted on being called Dick that was yet more evidence of his “moodiness.”

Allen’s reputation as a difficult character was not completely undeserved: he hurt himself punching a car headlight once, and on another occasion didn’t show up for a doubleheader. Some of his behavior was distinctly odd: for example he simply quit the White Sox with two weeks left in the 1974 season.

Bill James made a big deal of Allen supposedly being a bad influence on his teammates, especially his younger Black teammates like Carlos May, when arguing that Allen shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame, which he still isn’t. Allen’s HOF case isn’t overwhelming: while he was a great hitter for most of the first decade of his career, he was essentially finished at age 32 and was never more than an indifferent fielder at various positions. But there are a lot of worse players in Cooperstown, and Allen was nothing if not unforgettable in his own distinctive way.

RIP.

[SL]: Jay Jaffe’s comprehensive review of Allen’s career is typically excellent. Basically, his Hall of Fame case boils down to whether you think genuine greatness in a relatively short career is as or more worthy of recognition than a career with more bulk and a lower peak. I personally would vote for him without hesitation, and while I can’t find it online I though the Craig Wright response to James (who I think has moderated his position since The Politics of Glory) he refers to, which documented many teammates who admired Allen and didn’t think he undermined their teams at all, was compelling.