After 20 misses, late Phillies star Dick Allen is finally a Hall of Famer: ‘It should’ve happened so long ago’

Allen, who died in 2020, is bound for Cooperstown 47 years after he last played in a major-league game and will be inducted on July 27.

Dick Allen, who died in 2020, is finally a. Hall of Famer.Read moreINQ FOX

by Scott Lauber

Published Dec. 8, 2024, 7:44 p.m. ET

DALLAS — When the moment arrived, at long — oh-so-loooong — last, Richard Allen Jr. leaned back in a chair in a hotel ballroom and stared at a television. He looked calm, but well, don’t kid yourself.

“That,” he said later, “was a long five minutes.”

OK, so MLB Network might have dragged out the announcement for dramatic effect. But what’s another five minutes when the Allen family has waited for, what, 40 years? More?

And as the words spilled from National Baseball Hall of Fame president Josh Rawitch’s mouth — “Our first member … of the Hall of Fame class … of 2025 … played 15 seasons … from 1963 to ‘77″ — Allen stood up and embraced his cousin, Rick, and son, Richard III (”Trey,” for short), and yelled so loudly that he never actually heard the words.

Dick Allen is a Hall of Famer.

Finally.

Forty-seven years after he last played in a major-league game — after 20 misses in elections by writers and committees, twice in the last 10 years by the razor’s-edge margin of one vote — the late, great Phillies slugger received 13 of 16 votes from the Classic Era Committee.

Dave Parker, a fearsome left-handed slugger who mirrored Allen’s power from the right side, was elected, too, with 14 votes. (Twelve votes, a 75% majority, were needed for election.) They will be inducted into the Hall of Fame on July 27 in Cooperstown, N.Y., with any former players who get a three-quarter majority on the writers’ ballots.

Allen, who died in December 2020, could be the first player inducted with a Phillies cap since Jim Bunning in 1996. Roy Halladay, also inducted posthumously, didn’t have a logo on his plaque because his family didn’t want to choose between the Phillies and Blue Jays.

“I do not know,” Allen Jr. said about whether his dad’s plaque will feature a “P” or the logo of the White Sox, with whom he won an MVP award in 1972. “That’s another question. Oh, gosh. So much to think of.”

No need to worry. There’s time. But Allen Jr. came here to the Hilton Anatole, site of baseball’s winter meetings this week, with family and friends because they couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. So, they sat in a ballroom on the mezzanine level of the hotel, one floor above the TV set where the announcement went down.

Moments after the news broke, a Phillies spokesperson handed a phone to Allen Jr. On the other end, owner John Middleton offered congratulations.

“I’m in a state of shock, really,” Middleton told The Inquirer by phone. “I was sitting with [his wife] Leigh after we got back from the Eagles game, and I started crying. I said, ‘I can’t believe it.’ I never thought it would happen because it should’ve happened so long ago.”

For a generation of Phillies fans, including Middleton, Allen was an icon. He wielded a 40-ounce bat and smashed 351 home runs in a 15-year major-league career. He was a seven-time All-Star, NL Rookie of Year for the star-crossed 1964 Phillies, and an AL MVP. From 1964-73, he led the majors with a 165 OPS+.

Allen’s power was legendary. His career preceded nightly SportsCenter highlights, so stories of his towering shots over the left-center field roof at Connie Mack Stadium seemed more like tall tales. But although his prodigious strength from the right side of the plate is locked in fans’ memories, it was verifiably real.

“Dick was the first athletic superstar in my life,” said Middleton, who was 9 years old in Allen’s rookie year. “But what I was really struck by once I got to know him was what a good, decent person he was.”

Yet Allen’s legacy was complicated, even polarizing. He endured racism, threats, and what Middleton described as “incomprehensible abuse” that only got worse in 1965 after Allen fought Frank Thomas, a white teammate who allegedly instigated the fight during batting practice.

During games, Allen would write messages in the dirt about wishing to be traded. He loved horse racing and once famously missed a doubleheader in New York because he was at Monmouth Park. The Phillies traded him to the Cardinals after the 1969 season.

» READ MORE: The legend of Dick Allen's 42-ounce bat

Never mind that Allen was a dominant slugger during a decadelong prime. Or that he returned to the Phillies in 1975 and helped them reach the playoffs a year later. He never received more than 18.9% of the vote in 14 years on the writers’ Hall of Fame ballot.

Criticism from noted baseball historian Bill James proved particularly harmful to Allen’s candidacy. In his 1995 book “Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame,” James wrote that Allen “did more to keep his teams from winning than anyone else who ever played major league baseball. And if that’s a Hall of Famer, I’m a lug nut.”

Allen Jr. said his father never talked about the Hall of Fame. He didn’t like self-promotion. But he had passionate Cooperstown backers in Philadelphia and Chicago.

Mark Carfagno, a former groundskeeper at Veterans Stadium and Allen’s close friend, launched a full-scale campaign that would’ve made a presidential candidate blush. David Fletcher, a Chicago-based historian, authored “Chili Dog MVP: Dick Allen, The 1972 White Sox and A Transforming Chicago,” and worked behind the scenes to boost Allen’s Hall candidacy.

“I’m reflecting back at all of the things we did to keep his name in the public’s eyes,” Carfagno said in a text message after the announcement. “From the first day [Allen Jr.] called me and all the way up to tonight. So much happened in between — rallies, press conferences with the mayors, both Nutter and Kenney, even Gov. [Wolf]. So many things.”

For years, Mike Schmidt lobbied on Allen’s behalf. In 2021, Middleton put together a brochure that he sent to Braves chairman Terry McGuirk, who served on the Classic Era committee.

And finally, the voting went Allen’s way.

“I kind of lost some faith because, with the numbers that are being put up today, it would sort of lower his numbers,” Allen Jr. said. “You’ll hear things like, ‘So-and-so has surpassed Dick Allen with 352 home runs,’ and it just drops him down. “So, yeah, I kind of thought that eventually he’d be forgotten.”

No chance of that now.

How would Allen have reacted to the news?

“He always had the green Heinekens,” Allen Jr. said. “That’s what we’re getting ready to do. We’re going to get some green ones.”