Baseball fans celebrate today the long-overdue National Baseball Hall of Fame admission of Dick Allen, whose 1972 exploits saved the White Sox for Chicago. But their celebration is muted by the knowledge that he’s not here to save the team for Chicago again in 2025.
The charismatic but mercurial slugger was elected Sunday by the MLB’s Classic Baseball Era electorate, whose charter is to consider retired players and others from the period before 1980 who were passed over in the primary Hall of Fame election process.
Indeed, this was Allen’s seventh appearance on one of these “old-timers” ballots, as Jayson Stark recently noted in The Athletic. In his last two appearances, he missed enshrinement by only one vote. No doubt, his relatively short career, his many team moves and his reputation as something of a “free spirit” all played a part in the delay.
Because the numbers themselves don’t lie. In a career shortened in part by injury and in part by temperament, Allen amassed 351 home runs and 1,119 RBIs. He led the American League in home runs twice. He won the Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player awards. He was a seven-time All-Star selection, in an era when that really meant something.
Nor did his incredible relationship with Sox Nation lie, either. Whether it was swinging his big 40-ounce bat like a toothpick, or juggling baseballs in the dugout with a cigarette hanging from his lips, Allen was perhaps the most magnetic player in Sox history. He was revered by the fans — and he showed them respect in return. He was one South Side stud.
But as Sox fans of a certain age will readily attest, his greatest Hall of Fame credential is the undeniable fact that his short White Sox career served to lift the team from obscurity and keep it from being moved out of town.
Allen arrived in Chicago through a controversial trade for pitcher Tommy John (yes, that Tommy John). The Sox were his fourth team in four seasons, and he carried a reputation of “too tough to handle.” And he compounded the concern by conducting a short holdout before reporting to his first spring training camp.
The Sox team he joined had bottomed out — a then-record 106-loss season in 1970, plummeting attendance and underwater finances. The team’s stability was so bad that in 1969, the team actually played a series of “home” games in Milwaukee. No doubt about it; the Sox were on the cusp of being sold.
Allen’s 1972 MVP season completely changed the team’s fortunes. With his swagger, his spirit and his performance, he had one of the most dynamic single seasons in baseball history, driving the team well into contention for much of the year and driving up fan interest along the way.
Hall of Fame reliever Rich “Goose” Gossage was a 20-year-old Sox rookie in 1972. For the classic book “Chili Dog MVP,” he recalled: “Allen was the greatest player that I ever had the privilege of playing with.”
But Allen’s Hall of Fame admission is tinged with bitter irony. Not because it was so long in coming, but rather because it comes when the Chicago future of the Sox is once again in doubt.
The team is in the midst of the baseball version of a “doom loop.” Ownership claims that only a new, taxpayer-supported park in a new location will secure the team’s future. It says that without the new park, a move to new ownership — and greener out-of-town pastures — is likely. It’s an argument unfairly propagated by the ownership’s indications that the current ballpark is unsafe, that fans are uncomfortable coming to games.
For Allen could tell them a thing or two about ballpark safety. He was a survivor — albeit a scarred one — of the hostile fan environment of the Southern-based minor leagues that existed into the early 1960s. Indeed, he played the 1963 season in Little Rock, Arkansas, where there was harsh, open resistance to integrated baseball.
His habit of wearing a batting helmet while on the field dated to his early years with the Phillies, when he needed protection from objects thrown at him by the Philadelphia fans. The only things thrown at Allen in Chicago were cheers from the large home team crowds who came to watch him play.
Allen isn’t coming back in 2025 to physically save the Sox again. But his short “Sox life” may have a similar saving impact, if only by reminding the Sox organization that great, fan-connecting players, more so than new ballparks in new neighborhoods, offer the true recipe for success.
Michael Peregrine is a Chicago attorney. He is a lifelong White Sox fan.
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