Dick Allen

   Baseball lost arguably the best player that isn't in the Hall of Fame without current ballot eligibility as Dick Allen passed away at the age of 78.

Allen had fallen short of Hall of Fame induction in the last veterans' committee meeting by one vote with the next vote from the "Golden Days" committee coming next year.

Allen's candidacy had gained steam over the last decade with the increased dependence on Sabermetrics with Allen listed by many baseball numbers crunchers as the top player of his time that is not currently in the Hall.

The 1964 National League Rookie of the Year with the Phillies and the 1972 American League MVP with the White Sox as Allen led the league in homers and RBI, Allen played in the All-Star game on seven occasions.

Known for his long home runs and heavy bat (40 ounces), Allen cleared the Connie Mack Stadium twice with homers that were thought to be unreachable for a righthanded hitter.

Allen is also ranked second in career slugging percentage that is not currently in the Hall behind only Albert Belle, another player that fell off the ballot too soon due to controversial incidents that reporters that would eventually be voters would hold against him.

The 1972 White Sox were a one-man squad as Allen literally carried them to a second-place finish to eventual world champion Oakland.

Allen's league-leading 37 homers were equaled by Chicago's second, third, fourth, and fifth place players in homers, and he led the league in RBI as well as hitting .308 with an OPS over 1,000.

I asked ESPN's Christina Kahrl for her thoughts on Allen and she was kind enough to respond- 

"He was one of baseball's most dominant hitters in a low-offense era, which mutes some portion of his greatness. What he did on the field, for the standard of his day, clearly puts him in the conversation about Cooperstown."

I have to agree with Christina's opinion- Allen should be in the conversation for the Hall and she places the operative words correctly " For the standard of the day".

That means that his lack of statistical milestones shouldn't be held against him because those numbers were excellent for his time.

Check Jayson Stark's tremendous article on Allen in the Athletic for numbers that should allow interested observers to re-evaluate how they judge the HOF.

Is it more important to accumulate numbers for longer, even if it is from a very good player rather than a great one?

Or should we place a higher priority on greatness, even if it's a shorter period of time?

Stark's column (read it, it's great) offers these stats for Allen.

From 1964-74, Dick Allen was second only to Hank Aaron in OPS (by one point),  second only to Aaron in slugging percentage, and first in OPS+.

Now consider the great players that played in that time and tell me that Dick Allen doesn't rank with the game's best.

Allen's career was filled with controversy, but he was a man ahead of his time.

The "controversy" that surrounded Allen in Philadelphia would have been considered very mild today, and with fifty years of hindsight, Allen may have had even more supporters than denigrators if he was playing in today's game.

Allen was known for a sometimes thorny personality, even late in life as my friend Greg Weimann recalled yesterday that he had to talk Allen into taking a photo with his son after paying for Allen to sign something at a card show and that when he asked for a photo with Allen and himself, he was turned down even after Allen's wife encouraging him to do so.

I'm sure that didn't help Allen's case with the fellows holding his HOF fate in their hands, but I'm not sure Allen cared about that part of it, although I'm sure he might have thought about that as he failed to make Cooperstown.

I haven't read the recent book on Allen by Mitchell Nathanson, who has written a more recent book on Jim Bouton, but Allen's 1989 autobiography "Crash" was a bit different than the average sports book.

When you read that book, it doesn't come off as extremely ghost-written and while clearly, Allen didn't write it, you could tell that he was involved far more than the average athlete's autobiography.

And one final note on Dick Allen from this blog.

The most popular recurring feature here are the Forgotten Superstars posts and it was Dick Allen that was the first profile that I ever wrote for that series in the first month of the blog.

I occasionally look back at the early years of the blog when I may have to list a link and I'll actually be pleased with the progress that I've made as a writer (not that professionals have anything to worry about), but the Dick Allen post, while not great writing, holds up better than most because it reads how I intended it to- as a fan of his career.

While it is usually the case that I'm a fan of the various beings (remember we do have a horse in the series) that are involved in the series, I was a proponent even thirteen years about the candidacy of Dick Allen for the Hall of Fame.

For years, there was a link to a site promoting Allen for the Hall until that site became dormant and to this day, the Dick Allen piece consistently is among the top twenty posts on the site for hits each year.

One final note.

Dick Allen (and Tony Oliva) each fell short by one vote in the last election of the committee that gets together every few years to discuss such things.

The meeting was scheduled for this year and was canceled due to Covid-19 and postponed until 2021.

Allen was expected to have an excellent chance of induction and now that he has passed, I would say his chances have increased further.

Which makes me madder about how things with Hall of Fame voting.

Ron Santo and football's Kenny Stabler were deserving of induction for years, yet not until they passed away did they finally receive their deserved honor.

I'd bet money that Dick Allen will receive the same treatment-induction after he could have been honored in person....