Dick Allen (Originally Written October 7, 2019)

During the off-season of 1971, the White Sox added a controversial first baseman after dealing pitcher Tommy John for “Richie” Allen.  Tommy John was a good pitcher, but he was best known for a surgical procedure that saved his baseball career.  Why do I care about Dick Allen?  He was an anti-hero, and I seemed to like these kinds of individuals as they are more interesting than regular heroes.  In my view, Richard Anthony Allen was cut from the same cloth as Holden Caulfield, Jay Gatsby, Hamlet, MacBeth, Han Solo, and Keith Mallory.  Allen exceeded them in my estimate because he was a ball player.

A few years before, the Philadelphia Phillies recognized Allen’s talents, signing him to a contract with a large bonus for the time in 1960.  Allen worked his way up through the Phillies’ farm system, and in 1963, he would play in Little Rock, Arkansas, where its highest-level minor-league team played.  Allen was the first African-American professional baseball player in Arkansas—more than 16 years after Jackie Robinson integrated professional baseball.  Governor Orval Faubus threw out the first pitch in Allen’s first game in Little Rock—a clear emblem that racial tolerance would come slowly to Little Rock.  Allen went through hell that season.  He lived apart from in white teammates in an African-American part of town.  He was the subject of shabby treatment from the hometown fans, harassed by the local police, and received death threats from racists. 

Allen joined the Phillies during the following season.  The City of Brotherly Love was not so loving to Allen.  His team promoted him as Richie Allen, to link him to the team’s former great star Richie Ashburn.  Even though he was the National League’s best rookie in 1964, the fickle Phillies’ fans were hard on Allen.  Playing out of position at third base, Allen led the league in errors.  To make matters much worse, the Phillies choked away a six-and-one-half-game lead over the final two weeks of the season.  Allen received more than his share of blame for the collapse.  He finally escaped Philadelphia following the 1969 season, and he spent the next two seasons in Saint Louis and Los Angeles, respectively. 

In 1972, Allen only wanted two things:  to hit baseballs and to be called by the name his mother gave him, “Dick.”  The team on the south side of Chicago was reeling after four horrible seasons.  Many rumors had the team relocating in such locations as Seattle or Milwaukee.  However, there was hope for the club going into the 1972 season.  Traditionally, pitchers prospered in spacious Comiskey Park, and the team possessed some good arms.  In the field, Bill Melton became the first Sox player to hit 30 homers in a season in 1970 (33), and the following year, he became the first Sox player to ever lead the American League in homers, again hitting 33 homers.  The franchise began in 1901.  Babe Ruth, by himself, topped the 30-homer plateau thirteen times.  The Sox were not known for the long ball.  Aside from Melton, the rest of the 1972 squad could barely hit the ball, let alone hit it out of the ballpark.  Now they had Allen, who hit 40 homers in 1966.  Sox fans would call him anything he wanted.  More importantly, Manager Chuck Tanner let him do anything he wanted.

A dispute between owners and players delayed the 1972 season, where the players entered a strike over pension and salary arbitration.  The matter was resolved rather quickly in approximately ten days.  The Leagues decided to excise the lost portion of the season with no makeup games.  As a result, the Sox played 154 games, rather than the typical 162-game schedule.  Sox fans were served a bitter pill once the season actually started when the team dropped the first three games of the season to the Kansas City Royals.  But the team reeled off a seven-game winning streak following a 14 to nothing massacre of the Texas Rangers, behind the pitching of Wilbur Wood and the hitting of Dick Allen and Carlos May.  A three-run homer by May in the ninth inning against the California Angeles put the Sox in first place on May 21.  

Five days later, a loss to the Oakland A’s would push the Sox back into Second place, where they would languish into the summer.  A loss on July 18 to the Detroit Tigers would put the team eight and one-half games behind the first place A’s. 

Dick Allen resurrected the team, pushing them to 13 victories in 17 games.  The Sox went into old Oakland Coliseum, trailing the A’s by one game.  The A’s topped the Sox five to three in a 19-inning exercise of baseball torture, which depleted the bullpens of both teams.  Catfish Hunter earned the victory in that game, pitching the final two innings.  He would start the following game against seldom used Dave Lemonds.  Hunter allowed one run in eight innings, but Lemonds and Cy Acosta blanked the A’s, and gave the Sox the win.  The next day, Wood took the hill for the Sox against Blue Moon Odom, and they locked in on another pitcher’s duel, with each hurler only allowing one run in the ninth inning.  In the top of the 11th inning, Ed Spiezo slugged his second and final homer of the season off of Rollie Fingers to give the Sox the lead and the ballgame.  Wood pitched all 11 innings for the Sox, and the Sox possessed a first-place tie with the A’s.  But that was short-lived, as Vida Blue shut down the Sox in the final game of the series.  

The Sox battled on, carving out a slight lead over the A’s by August 26.  After winning the first game of a doubleheader, the Sox had won 70 out of 118 games.  Remarkable improvement for a team that averaged 67 and one-half wins and 94 and one-half losses over the past four seasons.  However, a late-season swoon doomed the team, as they could not catch a team that was much more talented.  A team that featured a young Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, and Vida Blue.  A team that would win five straight American League Western Division Championships, including three straight World Series. 

Professional sports can create mythological creatures out of ordinary people.  When teams win, greatness on the playing field excused personal flaws.  But losing magnified everything.  Intolerance can be forgotten when a gifted African-American player brings his team greatness and helps the team’s fans forget about their smaller and ordinary lives.  When the team has little success, fans show bitterness when the hero becomes injured but still receives a big paycheck.  In 1972, Allen clubbed a new team record and league-leading 37 homers.  He also led the league in runs batted in, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, bases on balls, and extra-base hits.  He received 321 out of 336 points for the league’s Most Valuable Player award.  More importantly, the Sox finished third in attendance in the American League.  Many years later, former White Sox general manager Roland Hemond asserted that Allen saved the team, amid rumors of moving the franchise out of Chicago.  However, Allen’s success with the White Sox was short-lived.  

While Allen provided most of the offensive highlights during the 1972 season, the team’s success was due to their outstanding pitching, anchored by Wilbur Wood, Stan Bahnsen, and Tom Bradley.  Today, a starting pitcher expects to pitch six or seven innings in 30 to 32 starts, amounting to 200 innings in a given season.  Baseball was different in 1972, where good starting pitchers were expected to finish that which they started.  Over a four-year period, Wilbur Wood exemplified this ethic.  Notably, Wilbur Wood was not what one would picture an athlete to be.  He appeared shorter, mostly due to his girth.  He looked more like a 16-inch softball pitcher than a professional baseball player.  He joined the Sox in the 1960s after not living up to his potential with other teams.  The Sox put him in the bullpen, where future hall-of-famer Hoyt Wilhelm taught him how to throw a knuckleball.  Soon, Wood excelled in a relief role alongside his mentor.  In 1971, the Sox placed Wood in the starting rotation, and he responded by winning 22 games.  He would win 106 games for the Sox from 1971 to 1975, starting 224 games, completing 99 of those starts, and pitching 1,681 2/3 innings during that five-year period.  He recorded the fourth and eighth most innings pitched during single seasons for the Sox.  Eight of the other best ten single-season marks for innings pitched were done by Sox pitchers before 1917.  His 49 starts in 1972 tied a team record set by Ed Walsh in 1908.

During my formative years, I listened to the old guys talk about baseball, including White Sox great Dick Allen.  Even after the move to Skokie, I returned to Waukegan to spend weekends with my grandparents, and on occasion, my father would pop into his parents for a day or so.  My grandfather spent a lot of time at Dickshot's Dug Out, owned by former Sox outfielder Johnny Dickshot.  There, I received my early education on all things baseball.  

In the spring of 1975, Dickshot asked me who my favorite ballplayer was, to which I responded Richie Allen.  He told me Dick Allen retired, but he wondered why I liked him.  Dick Allen was the only Sox player that I heard my father and grandfathers talk about, but I said I liked him because he hit a lot of home runs.  Dickshot said that there was more to the game than homers.  He told me about the young shortstop on the Sox, Bucky Dent—Dent played the game the “right way.”  At that moment, I had my first real favorite baseball player.

While Bucky Dent played the game the “right way” in Dickshot’s opinion, the 1975 and 1976 Sox editions lacked talent.  The White Sox drafted Bucky Dent in the 1970 amateur draft, after the Saint Louis Cardinals were unable to sign him.  In 1974, the 22-year-old earned the starting job for a team coming off of a disappointing season.  The Sox were heavily favored to win the American League’s western division, but an injury to Dick Allen in June ended those hopes.  By 1974, the Sox were notably better with a core of younger players to surround Allen.  In the infield, the Sox had Allen at first, Jorge Orta at second, Dent at shortstop, Bill Melton at third, and Ed Herrmann behind the plate.  In the outfield, the Sox had Carlos May, Ken Henderson, and Bill Sharp.  Pat Kelly and former Cub Ron Santo shared DH duties.  The pitching staff was anchored by Wilbur Wood and Stan Bahnsen, but the Sox also added former Twin Jim Kaat.  In the bullpen, the Sox had Goose Gossage and Terry Forster.  

The Sox still had to contend with the Oakland A’s, but things seemed promising.  But a slow start doomed the Sox, as they dumped seven out of their first eight games.  They claimed first place in the division in early May, but never put together a hot streak.  The team never meshed, notably Allen and Santo clashed.  The aging veteran Santo did not like his role as utility man and DH.  Allen did not like Santo’s negativity in the dugout and the clubhouse.  With two weeks left in the season, Dick Allen retired from baseball.  Even in missing the last two weeks of the season, Dick Allen led the American League in homers and slugging percentage.  Allen’s retirement was premature, as he sought to return to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1975.  However, the Sox traded him to the Atlanta Braves for a player to be named later and some cash.  Atlanta later shipped Allen back to Philadelphia.

My childhood demonstrated a struggle between western individualism and eastern collectivism.  Individualists tend to place entitlements and privacy first, and they overvalue their own skills and overestimate their own importance to any group effort.  Collective societies tend to value harmony, loyalty, and duty, where they underestimate their own skills and are more self-effacing when describing their contributions to group efforts.  Individualism and collectivism are present in baseball. 

Without baseball, I could not reach such a lucid conclusion.  Clearly, the 1972 season was all about Dick Allen.  He was a unique individual.  Without him, Sox fans would have endured another horrible season.  But with him, the Sox did not win what matters most in baseball.  As the American League most valuable player, Dick Allen arguably posted the best individual statistics of the season for an individual player.  While the individual players on the Oakland A’s did not come close to Allen’s season, they found a way to come together to win what matters the most in baseball, the World Series, and they did it in three successive seasons.  While I never saw him play, but from a statistical standpoint, Allen would be the standard by which I would measure all Sox hitters.  The old timers said that everything stopped when Allen came up to bat.  For my generation of Sox fans, that occurred when the Big Hurt came up to bat.