Canseco and the Dick Allen Problem

Originally posted on Projo.com
One of the perennial debates that rages around baseball’s milestone numbers — 300 wins, 500 homers, 3000 hits — is when the party will be crashed by someone who doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame (right now, other than Pete Rose, everyone in those clubs is in the Hall or on the way), or, more properly, whether they do and should guarantee a ticket to Cooperstown, no questions asked.
We’ve had close calls — Tommy John and Bill Buckner come to mind — but the guys who didn’t deserve the honor always came up short. In recent years, the debate has centered on Jose Canseco and Fred McGriff. With Canseco’s retirement on Monday, it’s time to look at why, in my opinion, he was never a Hall of Fame threat even if he made it to 500. (McGriff is a better HOF candidate than you think, but I’m reserving judgment on him right now).
The occasional case for Canseco as a Hall of Famer has generally been based on his career totals: .266/.515/.353 with 462 homers and 1407 RBI. But his problem can best be explained by first looking at another candidate. It’s the Dick Allen problem.


Dick Allen, you see, was a great hitter. Hank Aaron great. Willie Mays great. Or very close, at least. Despite several lifetimes’ worth of distraction and controversy, Allen was a career .292/.534/.378 hitter, with a higher career slugging average than Mel Ott, Mike Schmidt, Ty Cobb, Harry Heilmann, or Edgar Martinez, despite playing in the most pitcher-friendly era in modern history and spending seasons of his prime in some severe pitchers’ parks like Dodger Stadium and Busch (for years he was the only man to hit 30 homers in a season at Busch Stadium). By any measure of per-at-bat offensive production, the top howevermany you’re looking at winds up being a bunch of Hall of Famers, some guys with extremely short careers, some active players, and Dick Allen. Baseball-reference.com, for example, has a stat called “Adjusted OPS+”, which is basically on base plus slugging divided by the league average over a player’s career, with some park adjustments. Allen is 20th on the list, ahead of people like Aaron and Joe DiMaggio and Honus Wagner and behind only one eligible non-Hall of Famer, Pete Browning. (Browning played in the American Association in the 1880s, then the weaker of the two major leagues, and was a notoriously bad fielder, finishing his career with 659 RBI and 414 errors, not a ratio we usually associate with immortality). Allen’s career totals are respectable: 351 homers, 1119 RBI. Other less productive sluggers have been enshrined without substantially larger totals (Orlando Cepeda and Hack Wilson and Chick Hafey, for example).
For this reason, the statistically-oriented among us tend to be drawn to Allen’s Hall of Fame cause. Allen’s cause even has a “hook” — many people feel that he’s been unjustly slighted for being a world-class jerk, and relatedly for his gift for creating racially tinged controversies in the racially charged Sixties. Allen was the guy who wore a batting helmet in the field because the Phillies fans threw so much stuff at him, remember. A good sample of the pro-Allen case is this piece by Don Malcolm on the Baseball Primer site. Bill James, one of Allen’s leading critics, hasn’t really helped the argument by being unusually dismissive of the statistical record in lumping Allen with Hal Chase as a player whose clubhouse influence was so malignant that he may not even have helped his teams win no matter what he did on the field.
There’s something to the argument that Allen may be one of those players who was such a polarizing figure that it’s an impossible task for him to get a fair shake from the people who saw him play. Even so, while I’ve been attracted by Allen’s cause in the past, I ultimately don’t buy it, and the reasons he falls just short are the same as why I don’t think Jose Canseco is within shouting distance of being a Hall of Famer. In a nutshell, when I look at a Hall of Famer, the first question I ask is, “how many seasons did this guy have where he was a Hall of Fame quality ballplayer”? And the second is, “how good was he in those years — just around or above the line, or way above it?” Dick Allen and Jose Canseco had plenty of days when they brought Hall of Fame talent to the ballpark. But they also both missed too much time and had too many other problems to really pile up a large number of Hall of Fame quality seasons. And if you don’t have a decent number of those type of seasons — I tend to think of an 8-10 year peak as the minimum necessary — you need to either have a truly incredible Koufax-like peak or an equally incredible record of both consistency AND longevity a la Don Sutton (756 career starts, third all time) to belong among the immortals.
The conclusion that Dick Allen was not quite a Hall of Famer came to me one day when I was trying to figure out, in the context of this argument, how Allen had been treated by the MVP voters of his day and whether he had been given a fair shake. Dick Allen only placed in the top 10 in the balloting 3 times, winning the award in 1972, finishing 7th in 1964 and 4th in 1966, and received virtually no votes in any other season. This seemed to me to be a poor performance for a guy who was such a dominating offensive force in his prime years, so I took a season-by-season look, with some help from Retrosheet and the player notes in the old edition of the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. The voters were indeed much too hard on Allen. Even so, there just weren’t quite enough full “star” years to convince me of his case.
Allen’s Rookie of the Year season in 1964 was a legitimately brilliant year with the bat, comparable to Albert Pujols’ debut but more valuable given the lower-scoring context. The Phillies improved by 5 games with Allen in the lineup and led the pennant race until a now-infamous late-season collapse, which wasn’t any more Dick Allen’s fault than anyone else’s. Nor can you really blame Allen’s “leadership,” since he was a 22-year-old rookie. Allen led the league in runs and total bases, was 7th in on base, 5th in batting, 3rd in slugging, yet he finished just 7th in the MVP vote — what gives? After all, the voters gave the award to Roy Campanella over Monte Irvin in 1951, Maury Wills over Willie Mays in 1962, Jim Rice over Ron Guidry in 1978, and George Bell (who was a huge cause of the Blue Jays’ collapse) over Alan Trammell in 1987, so you can’t say that the voters are biased against players on teams that choke down the stretch. I’d agree that Allen should probably have placed higher, but he was hardly the best player in the league. Allen was a very unstable glove man at third base, making a staggering 41 errors that season, and you can’t plausibly argue that he was better than, say, Willie Mays, who hit 47 homers and finished ahead of Allen. The award went to Ken Boyer, a better fielder who drove in more runs; not a great award, and Allen probably should have been voted ahead of Boyer and Johnny Callison, at least. Give Allen a few points here for ranking lower than he should have, but he wasn’t the MVP.
1965 is a somewhat similar story: Allen didn’t have an argument to be one of the 4 or 5 best players in the league: he was miles behind Mays and Koufax, and since he was 7th in the league in OPS, didn’t drive in or score 100 runs and made 26 errors at third base, he easily deserved to rank below people like Aaron, Willie McCovey, Frank Robinson, Ron Santo, Joe Torre, Clemente and Pete Rose. On the other hand, Allen’s 28th place finish seems rather low for a guy who played 161 games for a team with a winning record, batted over .300 with power, drew walks and ran well.
But 1965, when he was 23 years old, would be the last time Dick Allen appeared in more than 155 games. In 1966 he had a monster year with the bat: .317 with 40 homers, 110 RBI, 112 Runs, .632 slugging, .396 OBP. He led the league in slugging and OPS and was among the top 4 in the league in numerous other offensive categories. His team won 87 games. He finished 4th in the MVP balloting. By my reckoning, he should have been second: he was by far the best hitter in the league. I would have voted for Koufax, who threw 323 innings with a league leading 1.73 ERA and won 27 games for a team with a below-average offense (even adjusted for the park). But the voters put Allen behind Roberto Clemente (who had more RBI and a better throwing arm and won the award even as the second-best hitter on his team) and Willie Mays. Why? Well, Allen’s team finished behind the Pirates and Giants, and the Phillies were buried in the early going because they went 11-13 in Allen’s absence after he dislocated his shoulder in late April — when Allen returned, the team had dropped from 1.5 back to 6.5 games back and in 6th place. They finished 8 games out. Of course, Mays and Clemente each missed a few games as well, but the voters clearly cut Allen for the damage done by his absence, as well as for a highly publicized and racially tinged fight with Frank Thomas, a veteran outfielder who had hit well for the Phillies down the stretch in 1964 and was released by the team shortly after the altercation. Also, the Phillies tried Allen in left field for 47 games, but his defense there was poor, and he wound up back at third.
Then we get to 1967 . . . in 1967, the Phillies were never really in the race, but there wasn’t much of a race: the Cardinals had an 8 game lead by the 5th of August. But 1967 would be the typical Dick Allen season: he hit tremendously well, leading the league in on base percentage (.404) and finishing second in slugging (.566), plus he stole 20 bases in 25 attempts and hit into just 9 double plays. A great player, right? But Allen wasn’t among the league leaders in Runs, RBI, or Total Bases for a reason: he missed 40 games, including a 35-game stretch at the end of the season after shredding his hand pushing it through a headlight while moving his car. In his absence the team mostly used weak-hitting utilityman Tony Taylor (.238/.312/.308) at third base. The Phillies were 14-21 after Allen’s accident, losing six 1-0 games in that period. The Phillies scored 3.78 runs/game on the season, but just 2.88 after September 1. Unsurprisingly, Allen finished 19th in the MVP voting, mostly behind players who stayed in the lineup (with the exception of catcher Tim McCarver, who missed 24 games and was second in the balloting).
In 1968 Allen had to be moved to the outfield. He was healthier than usual, missing just 10 games and finishing second in slugging and home runs and 5th in RBI. His on base percentage was .352 compared to a league average of .298 (yikes!). His defense in left field was nothing to write home about, he was benched for a time by Gene Mauch, and the Phillies finished 10th, but you would still have counted him among the league’s best players just for his bat in a league where bats were hard to come by. Instead, he was ignored: not named on a single ballot, while a variety of hitters with weaker numbers and uncertain defensive credentials drew support (Lou Brock was on the pennant-winning Cardinals, yes, but he was a dreadful fielder and not in Allen’s universe as a hitter, and Brock was 6th in the balloting, with teammate Mike Shannon 7th for batting .266 with 15 home runs. Ernie Banks and Tony Perez also drew support for far weaker power numbers and unimpressive glove work).
So, in his first 5 years in the league, Allen had a start: three outstanding seasons among the league’s best players, one year as a star, one season of superstar quality but missing a quarter of the schedule. But his durability went downhill from there. In 1969 he missed 44 games; “missed” is one way to say it, but Allen was benched for a month in late June by Bob Skinner (Mauch was gone by now, and Skinner would be gone soon after) for failing to show up for a doubleheader after being late for games on several earlier occasions. By this point he was stationed at first base, and accustomed to his absences, the Phillies had lined up a backup (Deron Johnson) who was an above-league-average hitter, if no Dick Allen. For once the team played well in his absence, although they lost 99 games by season’s end. Not surprisingly, Allen was ignored in the MVP race, drawing not a single vote. It’s hard to fault the writers for this — can a guy be MVP when he misses a month of the summer because he didn’t care to show up for the games? We’re not talking Barry Bonds or Albert Belle here — there’s a world of difference between a guy who’s a jerk because he annoys reporters and teammates and a guy who’s a jerk because he doesn’t bother to play the game.
Allen was traded to the Cardinals in the offseason, as part of the deal that touched off the Curt Flood controversy, with St. Louis looking to fill the void left by the departure of Orlando Cepeda the previous year. Allen was then pressed into service at third base when Mike Shannon’s career came to an abrupt halt; he fielded .895, plus he made 2 errors in his 3 appearances in the outfield. He was 8th in slugging and OPS and seventh in homers against the headwind of Busch Stadium and made his fourth All-Star team, but once again not among the league leaders in Runs, RBI or Total Bases thanks to missing 40 games with assorted injuries. Bob Gibson went 23-7 and won the Cy Young Award, but the Cards were falling apart at the seams anyway, finishing 10 games under .500, and Allen was again ignored in the MVP race.
In 1971, it was the Dodgers’ turn. The Dodgers got 155 games of good play from Allen, and the team won 89 games and finished second, their best showing since Koufax retired, with Allen leading the team in slugging, on base, homers, and RBI. Allen’s only league leaderboard appearances were 10th in OPS and 4th in walks, although baseball-reference.com lists him 5th in “OPS+”, which is a park-adjusted figure, behind Hank Aaron, Willie Stargell, Joe Torre and Willie Mays. Despite his usually dreadful defense at multiple positions, Allen belonged in the race — he was in the lineup more than Aaron or Stargell or the 40-year-old Mays (who finished 19th in the voting) — and Torre was hardly a Gold Glover, although the OPS stat ignores the fact that Allen hit into more double plays than even the lead-footed Torre. Instead, Allen again got not one vote.
The slightly strike-shortened 1972 season (most teams played 154 games) brought a fresh start in the American League, including a new group of writers. Allen played 148 of them, and responded with his best season, leading the league in homers (37, with only one other player topping 26), RBI (by 13), slugging (by 65 points), OBP, walks, and extra base hits. Chuck Tanner stuck Allen at first base, where he didn’t do much damage. The White Sox improved by 8 games, their first winning season in 5 years, and held sole possession of first place as late as August 28 (the latest they’d held the lead since 1964) before fading in September. The writers recognized this — Dick Allen fell just 3 votes shy of a unanimous MVP selection, the 3 votes going to idiosyncratic choices Joe Rudi, Sparky Lyle and Mickey Lolich.
At this point, at age 30, Allen was still building his Hall of Fame resume. He’d been the undisputed best player in the league once, a legit MVP candidate 4 or other times, but with serious drawbacks regarding his defense and in some cases his durability, and had one very good season and three others cut short by injuries and insubordination.
After that, there wasn’t much left. 1973 was classic Dick Allen: he added 250 at bats of superb production to his career totals, but missed half the season with an injury. His team, 27-15 at the end of May and in first place on June 29 (around the time Allen went down), finished in fifth place, 17 games out; forced to replace Allen with light-hitting glove man Tony Muser at first base (Muser had a decent OBP but slugged just .388 to Allen’s .612), the offense dropped off from 4.2 runs/game through June to 3.89/game the rest of the way. Allen made the All-Star team but did not finish in the MVP balloting, drawing just one tenth-place vote.
Then there was 1974, Allen’s last good year. Again, the numbers look good: he led the league in homers, slugging and OPS and was 7th in RBI. But Allen missed 34 games, including abruptly announcing his retirement in mid-September. The pennant race moment had passed for the White Sox anyway — they wouldn’t contend again until 1977 — but Allen’s absence certainly didn’t help. He finished 23d in the MVP voting, behind a host of lesser lights (including Elliott Maddox, who also missed 25 games).
Allen came back with the Phillies in 1975 but hit poorly, .233 with little power. He was more productive despite assorted injuries the following season (.268/.480/.346 in 85 games) but was not a factor in his first postseason. The A’s released him early the following season, ending his career at 35.
Allen was one of the best players in baseball in his prime, yes, but — well, even in his best years there was always a “but” that kept him from being really the best, mainly poor defense. And a guy who played 130 games in a season just 6 times needs to do better than that. Allen’s teams were always visibly better when he was in the lineup than they were before he arrived, after he left or when he was hurt — but the Hall of Fame is about how much a player did to push his teams towards a championship, and in the real world championship teams need guys who show up for the games. Allen’s career as a whole averages out to some great stuff — and the totals aren’t bad. Bill James’ Win Shares system, for example, ranks Allen as one of the ten best eligible players not in the Hall of Fame in total Win Shares. But I just can’t give him the same credit for, say, the 322 games he played in 1967 and 1973-74 as if he had played them in two seasons at 161 a pop; those absences had a real, concrete impact on teams fighting for position in real standings. That context matters. It’s not the Hall-of-OPS, after all.
What does all this have to do with Jose Canseco? Well, Canseco’s story is much like Dick Allen’s, although while Canseco can be a conceited pain in the rear end he’s never been half as disruptive as Allen. But while Allen’s take at the end of 15 big league seasons leaves him just shy of Cooperstown, Canseco’s qualifications are far weaker, with even fewer genuine star-level seasons. Canseco has appeared in even as many as 120 games in a season just six times, in which he’s batted .240, .257, .307, .274 (in 131 games, 43 of them as a DH), .266 and .237 (with more than half his games as a DH). Here’s Canseco’s line for those six years:

Year G AB H 2B 3B HR R RBI BB SB XO Avg Slg OBP
1986 157 600 144 29 1 33 85 117 65 15 19 .240 .457 .318
1987 159 630 162 35 3 31 81 113 50 15 19 .257 .470 .310
1988 158 610 187 34 0 42 120 124 78 40 31 .307 .569 .391
1990 131 481 132 14 2 37 83 101 72 19 19 .274 .543 .371
1991 154 572 152 32 1 44 115 122 78 26 22 .266 .556 .359
1998 151 583 138 26 0 46 98 107 65 29 24 .237 .518 .318

(XO= GIDP+CS)
That’s a fine ballplayer, with one season as the best player in the game, but is that the guts of a Hall of Fame career? Bear in mind that Canseco not only missed 31 games in 1990, he also spent another 43 as a DH, and he played more than half his games at DH in 1998. His on base percentage was below .320 in half of his full seasons, in years when the league average was between .328 and .337. Two of those years, 1987 and 1998 (as well as many of the years when Canseco has been plugging away at 75-115 games a year as a DH/stationary object), were high-scoring seasons. (And we’re not even getting into his pitching exploits or the time the fly ball bounced off his head for a home run, which remains the single funniest thing that has ever happened). A typical Canseco year was 1995, when he hit .306/.556/.378 in 102 games as a DH for the division-winning Red Sox; you may remember him as a productive player, but there was a reason he didn’t make the All-Star team or finish on the charts in the MVP balloting, because his limitations in the field and durability-wise made him a lot less than a star. Is that a Hall of Famer? Maybe if you have that same season every year for 27 years. Maybe. If you’re dependable as clockwork. But the unpredictability of Canseco’s career, as with Dick Allen’s, has convinced innumerable employers that they can’t bank on him as part of the foundation of a winning team. To me, that means something.
Certainly a guy can have injury-shortened seasons or be used as a part-time player, and they can be part of his Hall of Fame case. Look at George Brett, or Ted Williams, or Mickey Mantle, or Joe DiMaggio, or Al Kaline, or Willie McCovey, or Willie Stargell. But those guys all had more of a foundation to build around than Canseco. Reggie Jackson played at least 131 games 12 years in a row (streak broken by the strike) and 16 times overall; Jim Rice 11 times, Stargell 9 times, McCovey 8 times and never with an on base percentage below .350. Billy Williams, with career totals similar to Canseco’s, played 150 or more games 12 years in a row, and went 8 years without missing a game. Other than old-time catchers, nearly everyone in the Hall of Fame made it there by playing regularly for a good chunk of time; the exceptions are people like Frank Chance, who’s half in as a manager, or Chick Hafey, whose enshrinement can’t be justified without reference to the influence of Frankie Frisch over the Veterans’ Committee. The only player in the Hall who may have legitimately put himself in on the basis of part-time play was Ted Lyons (I’ll save the debate about the “Sunday pitcher” for another time).
But by and large, you don’t stitch together a Hall of Fame career out of bits and pieces of seasons. Dick Allen was a great ballplayer — when he was available. Jose Canseco was sometimes a great ballplayer — when he was available. A Hall of Famer is a great ballplayer — period.

17 thoughts on “Canseco and the Dick Allen Problem”

  1. Can you get me any info on contacting Richie Allen (Phillies)? I am desperate to get my husband his autograph—he is all time favorite baseball player–rarely missed a Phillies game when he played. Thank you JoAnn

  2. when you mention the word dick allen you must talk about hank aaron wiillie mays because there wasnt too many ballplayers could do what he did his many many 500 foot + crash super mega blasts how about 2 inside the park homeruns in one game it is a farce that he is not in the hall of fame the person who wrote that lenghtly story about dicks career is a huge fan but wont admitt how can you say he does not belong he was the greateast and maybe the most gifted ballplayer ever you have to realize that he played with incredible players like aaron mays clemente not these steroid players today sjuiced up ball bat players dont compare baseball in the 60,s 70,s withe the nonsense today look when they gave sugar punk leonard over i stopped watching boxing like i use to when dick retired baseball to me took a big dive dickallen is and always will be the greateast do you think cares about it anybody that can play baseball knows dick belongs hands down and is the phonet none playing writers that kept himm out big stick superstar dick donnt call me richie the great crash allen rules for ever

  3. in re Dick Allen……i have no problem with your analysis of “Crash”..however..i loved the guy…compared to the jerks today in pro sports..was Allen so bad?..maybe…but i doubt it..i am not an insider and have no way of knowing..but when he was with the Phillies he gave us fans thrills unlike any except maybe Mantle and Mays..so be it..m coleman

  4. Re: Dick Allen my all-time favorite Ballplayer and so misunderstood but thats for arguments sake…My complaint is about Ron Santo..Everyone thinks he should be in the Hall and thats fine if you put Allen in with him…No way Santo could hold a candle to Dick Allen..Also same reasons for not putting Santo in as Allen…Did nothing towards Championships, this with a greater cast of so-called HOF’ers…Santo worst Base-runner in history, compared to Allens great career on base running, Santo couldn’t hit in clutch, Allen did a lot more…Be careful who you think should and shouldn’t be in….

  5. Dick Allen was my favorite player. Babe Ruth and Willie Mays could have been the best but did not play for my favorite team.
    My favorite memory watching a White Sox game in the 70s. Dick Allen and Bill Melton both homered in the same game. Melton hit a towering shot that took forever to loop into the left field lower deck stands.
    When Allen swatted one that same day, the ball travelled to the furthest reaches of the park over the CF fence, reaching its destination in a fraction of the time that Melton’s ball took to reach a shorter distance. Dick Allen hit line drives, very hard and long. I also enjoyed watching Rod Carew ply his trade. But Dick Allen was the greatest hitter I have personally seen play.

  6. I saw Dick Allen play for the White Sox 72 thru 75. This guy was a natural. One of the best I ever saw if not the best. The Sox franchise was in big trouble before Dick Allen, playing some of their home games in Milwaukee. Unfortunately for Dick, his last year with the Sox, he had to put up with a loud mouthed, bossy low IQ, has-been named Ron Santo. Dick left, and since then, the Sox play all of their home games in Chicago. Thanks Dick!

  7. Dick Allen was also my favorite player as a kid. I really didn’t care about all the “off the field” things people said he did, I only knew he could crush the baseball. I have always been surprised at how little respect he gets when it comes to the Hall of Fame. I have recently created a DICK ALLEN HALL OF FAME website to celebrate his career, provide comprehensive information about his HOF case, and facilitate an ongoing discussion.
    visit my site at: https://www.expressfan.com/dickallenhof

  8. First of all I want to thank you for this site. Dick Allen was,no is, my favorite ballplayer.I watched him play in the sixties and seventies and admired his values and philosophy along with his thunderous homeruns.As a child i thought everyone in philadelphia hated him until one day.that day i went to a signing of his autobiography and when i turned the corner to go into the book store i saw a line that was oh so very long.while waiting in line and listening to the comments i discovered that what i read in the media was very different from how the fans felt about him .That day was wonderful for me because I finally got a chance to meet and shake the hand of my favorite ball player.It is my wish to someday have 15 minutes of his time to tell him what an inspiration he was to me.
    Roy McClain

  9. I want to thank everyone that remember and enjoyed the way my uncle played the game of baseball..I watch the way the guys play today and I wonder to myself why he is not in the hall of fame..but I think I know why..and thats because he got negitive press from the sports writers.he has never gambled on baseball or took drugs and he even gave kids autographs. I look at his overall numbers and they are just as good or even better then some of the guys that are in the hall of fame. For the life of me I can’t understand why he is not in the hall.It is really good to know that their are people and fans out here that enjoyed the way he played the game.I just hope for one thing that they don’t wait til he is gone before they put him in….

  10. Dick Allen was a tremendous baseball player that was often under appreciated. I had the chance to meet Dick in 1990 at the age of 48 after he slugged a home run into the left field stands at the Equitable Old Timers Game in 1990 at Wrigley Field during All Star Week.
    I found he had a great sense of humor. Read the book, “Crash” and you will really get an insight into who Dick Allen is as both man and athlete. I would like to know where I can get another copy of his book. I bought it in the summer of 1988 and would like my son to have a copy.
    Thank you for bringing back a great name.

  11. thank you for the great analysis of the career of the great Dick Allen. Yes, he saved my beloved White Sox for Chicago. No one hit the ball harder. And to see the Comiskey Field lights reflect off his red batting helmet while playing first base is a great memory. The tag-team of Allen and Melton is very overlooked and underappreciated. i met Dick at a booksigning for “Crash” and he couldnt have been nicer … i also saw him at an emotional appearance at the annual SoxFest … i am sure if he could do it again, he would have loved to have played longer in chicago after experiencing the outpouring of affection he received then, and at every chicago appearance since. Yeah, Frank Thomas is a first baseman, but Dick Allen is THE White Sox Hall of Fame first baseman …. thats good enought for us and – perhaps – for him as well.
    How ironic Jose Canseco pretty much finished up his career in Chicago too! Rodney – get your uncle back to chicago … Ozzie could use a ‘guest’ hitting instructor and the fans would love to see him back around town!

  12. Thanks for the great article about Dick Allen. I wasn’t old enough to remember him play, but I’ve always been intrigued by his story. I tend to believe he belongs in the hall of fame though.

  13. Dick Allen, man, this guy was just awesome! I was too young to know the politics of the game, but, man did I love Dick Allen! I love the White Sox today because of him! I don’t know of anyone that could hit the baseball as far as he did! I can remember his hitting one completly out of Comisky park (over the roof)! Thx for the memories!

  14. Living in New York, I watched Dick Allen play when the Phillies, then the WhitSox came into town. My earliest memory of Dick Allen was watching him on TV hit 2 home runs off the Mets at the old Phillies ballpark in the 1960’s. Both home runs were hit to left field and went out of the stadium.
    Dick Allen was a natural. Like Mantle, Aaron, Ruth, etc. Not like the steriod durg user of today.

  15. I first seen dick allen when I was 10 years old. I went to the connie mack and he hit two home runs againts the cards. One of which left the stadium. That day he became my favorite player. When I was in the army in 1972 thur 1974 I followed his exploits with the white sox and he almost single handledly carried them to a pennant. Finished second behind the A’s. They should have built a momument of him in center field at Cominsky Park. I later met him at the phillies triple A stadium in Scranton pa. I spent several hours with him and he was one of the finest gentleman I have ever met. He was driving big blue the lincoln he was given in 1972 by the sporting news as the AL MVP. He also appeared in scranton in march of 1960 as a member of the Wampum High school basketball team. The defeated Montrose High that night for the Pa. state class B championship. Either he or willie somerset of Farrell High were the best basketball players in Pennsylvania in 1960. Not only was he a great athelete and a deserving hall of famer, he was also a great person.

  16. i think dick allen should be in the hall of fame!!IM 52 YEARS OLD AND WHEN I WAS A KID I REMEMBER HIS BLASTING HOME RUNS. HE HIT THE BALL HARDER THAN ANYONE.HE NEVER TOOK DRUGS;GAMBLED ON GAMES.HE WAS A GREAT THRILL TOO WATCH!! SINCERLY : LARRY GOSSELIN. ALLEN COOPERSTOWN YES!!!!!!

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