Dick Allen, who won the NL Rookie of the Year Award for the Phillies in 1964, and the 1972 AL MVP Award for the White Sox (as well as two AL home run titles), passed away today, at age 78.
He’s not in the Baseball Hall of Fame, though he came close in 2014, when he fell one vote short in the Golden Era Committee. He was an extremely talented player, though he had frequent off-field issues, and some of his managers believed him to have a bad attitude.
There are a lot of people who think he should be in the HOF and that racism and other things both during his career and in the evaluation of said career unfairly kept him out. I do think there is some merit to those claims but I think he’s borderline. Great and historically underrated player nonetheless.
RIP. And, no, he’s not a Hall of Famer in my opinion. Hall of Very Good. A player I heard a lot about but was retired before I got into baseball.
There are a lot of ways to measure a MLB career, but an adjusted OPS+ of 156 is mighty impressive. Check out the company that puts him with:
He gets dinged on WAR by supposed defensive shortcomings, but it’s a suspect stat for bygone eras.
While doing some reading this afternoon about Allen (recognizing that I didn’t know as much about him as I should), I found this, regarding his OPS numbers:
From what I’ve been reading, it’s speculated that the main reasons why he’s not in the HoF are:
https://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/50-year-old-bad-press-keeping-dick-allen-hall-fame/
I was about to say, had he quit after 1974, he’d have had a strong case as someone who was very good over a relatively short career. Of course, that would have required some prescience and disdain for the things money can buy.
Dick Allen was every bit as good or better than some Hall of Famers. but those are the ones that also don’t belong in the Hall.
I’m of the school that says you don’t use mistakes to measure who should get in.
So I wouldn’t vote for Dick Allen. The Hall of the Very Good is a fair place for him.
He really was very good though. Scary , dangerous hitter. Not such a great fielder as I vaguely recall.
I remember him as “Richie” Allen. Any reason he (or the fans and/or sportswriters) began calling him “Dick”?
The Phillies were the ones who dubbed him “Richie,” possibly to evoke memories of their former star, Richie Ashburn. He’d apparently always gone by “Dick” with family and friends, and after he left the Phillies, he requested that he be known as Dick, saying that “Richie” was a little boy’s name.
He’s hard to evaluate because in an era where superstars seldom got traded in their prime, he was several times. I can understand race being a problem in Philadelphia. But after a year in St Louis, he got traded by an organization that had Blacks such Gibson, Brock, White and Javier for a competent second baseman named Ted Sizemore. After a year with the Dodgers, the team that had Blacks such as Robinson, Campanella, Newcombe, Wills, Willie and Tommy Davis, and Roseboro
they trade him. They ended up with Tommy John, who had an almost HOF career but did they know that at the time…he was 106-112 in his career? With the White Sox his manager Chuck Tanner knew the family and he had a sensational year…carrying a flawed team on his back in a pennant race in a pitcher’s park in a pitching year. The next year the team regresses (Tanner also overworked his starters and among other things gave a roster spit to Allen’s brother). Allen played well but was injured mid season.
Before the 1974 season began you had an interesting new development. The Cubs decided to rebuild and tried to trade Ron Santo to the Angels. Players had recently been granted the right to veto a trade if they had 10 years service with the last 5 on the same team and Santo exercised his rights. Few people were aware this and it caused a sensation. So Santo forced a trade to the White Sox and that may have created a power struggle with the team. In any case Santo’s career collapsed and he retired at the end of the year. He wasn’t helped by the fact the White Sox tried to play him at second. Allen hit well but missed the last five weeks with another injury.
After that he decided he didn’t want to return.The White Sox traded him to Atlanta, he didn’t want to go. He and Philadelphia both decided to reunite and the Phillies finished first although Allen lost his hitting skill. After that it was off to Oakland where Charlie Finley had lost many players with his tight fisted ways and demeaning personality.
The fondest memory I have of Allen was one of these Cracker Jack Old Timers games around 1990. He hit a wicked line drive up the middle that Mickey Lolich somehow caught. In the spirit of fun Lolich proudly held it up and Allen bowed to him. Goose Gossage in his autobiography spoke highly of Allen as a teammate.
I read this book about him a few years ago.
IIRC…
He grew up in a racially tolerant town, but he had a really hard time in Arkansas minor league. By the time he made it to the majors he was already quite leery.
He wore that batting helmet on the field because in Philly, fans would throw D cell batteries and other things at him.
I saw a thing about Roberto Clemente and how the Pirates wanted to call him “Bobby” instead. Part of white America must have not been comfy with non-white men playing baseball so making them sound like boys…?
He had a big fight with another guy on the Phillies. IIRC the guy used to grab his thumbs and bend them backward because he was a racist prick. But the fans liked him. So one day they were at the batting cage and talk gets heated and the guy hits him in the arm with the bat. After the fight, Allen couldn’t even say what happened. The other guy got released and the fans blamed him.
Isn’t it in the NBA that they say the ref always sees the second foul? He’d been treated badly many times and I don’t blame him. And if sports writers provoke him to sell papers…?
I say let his baseball performance speak for itself.
IIRC the fielding thing was because they kept moving him around. I think he started at 3B and later OF and finally 1B. This was the era, where teams basically owned players—there weren’t free agents. So you pretty much did as you were told. Just ask Curt Flood.
Yeah, Dick Allen definitely belongs in the HOF.
Frank Thomas was the other guy. In its entry on Allen, Wikipedia has a summary of the fight, which you described pretty well:
Ah, ok, thanks for posting it. I just wanted to show the book where I got the info. It was kind of an interesting read, but I felt the writer might have done more with it. I see amazon has two even more recent ones:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=dick+allen&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
In any case, that was the era of racist mistreatment, often not even disguised. Colin Kaepernik, Trump not renouncing white supremacists, BLM…so much has changed! 
Ever hear him sing?
I’m not convinced it’s bad press that kept him out of the Hall.
What mostly kept him out of the Hall is that he had a very short career for a Hall of Famer. Allen played only 1749 games, which would be a really short career for a position player. Don Mattingly is frequently cited as a player who’d be in the Hall if his career hadn’t been shortened, but Don Mattingly actually played a few more games than Dick Allen did.
Allen was an exceptionally good hitter, but his career length meant he came up short of any significant milestone stat.
(Added later) Having said that, should Allen be in the Hall of Fame? Well, let’s do a Keltner List! (This is my own version.)
Allen won an MVP Award in 1972, which he deserved to win, but I would think it hard to say that he was ever the best player in baseball in the sense we usually use this question to mean. I’m not sure WHO the best player in baseball was in 1972; the AL was kind of in flux, while the NL probably had the best players. Not in a million years would I have wanted Dick Allen on my team over Johnny Bench or Joe Morgan.
Indeed, he was. Allen was clearly the best Phillie of the mid 60s, and the best White Sox player of the early 1970s.
There is, I guess, an argument to be made that Allen was actually the best third baseman in the game in the game for a few years, even though he wasn’t good at fielding the position. From 1964 to 1966 Allen amassed 22.7 bWAR, a hell of a run. In the same span, Brooks Robinson and Ken Boyer, the 1964 MVPs, amassed fewer. That is kind of a cherry pick, of course, that focuses on Allen’s best WAR years. I don’t think he was, but there’s an argument, anyway.
Allen never really helped a team win anything; this is the biggest knock against him. The only time he was on a playoff team was in 1976, when the Phillies won the division by nine games and Allen really made little difference on that.
Allen won his MVP at the age of 30; his last season as a regular was at 32 and injuries took their toll thereafter. So, a little bit.
No, he’s really not close. Obviously he is nowhere near Bonds and Clemens, but even if you take out all the PED users he’s not number one. I think is beyond any reasonable doubt that he isn’t as great a player as Scott Rolen, and I’m not a big Scott Rolen For The Hall guy. I don’t see how Allen is a greater payer than Willie Randolph, Dave Stieb, or a bunch of other guys.
His top ten comparables include no Hall of Famers. See Question 8 though.
Huge question. Allen was a much better hitter than the number superficially suggest because of the era he hit in. In 1968, Allen hit .268 with 33 homers, which doesn’t look like a huge deal but he really was one of the best hitters in the major leagues. His career 156+ OPS is tied for 19th all time.
Dick Allen was absolutely as good a hitter as Frank Robinson, Manny Ramirez, or Jimmie Foxx.
On the other, he was not a good defensive player, his career was short, and there is the talk about him being a divisive asshole. I’m not sure what to make of that last point; on one hand maybe it’s true, but on the other, Black players are not treated fairly by the media or posterity if they stick up for themselves.
No matter what position you put him at, no.
Pretty good. People in his time thought he was a hell of a player; he won the award in '72 and got votes in other years.
Allen made seven All Star teams, which is decent for a Hall of Famer.
Despite the fact it never happened, I think it could. Teams have won the World Series with no one having any better a year than Allen did on several occasions.