An athlete's grace, bravery, and perfection

When my daughter Jackie called to say that legendary pilot Chuck Yeager died, we talked about his amazing life and she said she remembered a book about him sitting on our shelf.

When I told her Dick Allen had also died on Tuesday, she asked who he was.

"He's why I took you and Mike to Comiskey Park when you were 5," I said.

Jackie is a college English professor who reads a book or two a week and that's on top of the hundred essays she also grades. I knew she'd quickly read up on Allen to learn what I was talking about.

"I wasn't born until after Dick Allen left Chicago," she said later.

Of course, she was right. But I explained that there probably would have been no White Sox and no Comiskey Park for Mike or her to see, had it not been for Dick Allen. For we needed Superman or Jesus or somebody to save the Sox in 1972 and it was Allen who came to the rescue.

In several previous years, through a series of lackluster seasons, attendance at Comiskey was dwindling. Ownership was contemplating moving the White Sox to another city, with Phoenix being most prominently mentioned.

That possibility was unthinkable to my grandparents, my father and my uncles who had suffered with the south side team for decades and who celebrated with the same kind of ecstasy as when wars end, when the "Go-Go Sox" finally won the American League Pennant in 1959. I was just a kid, then and Sister Joel wheeled a black and white television set with rabbit ears into our classroom at St. Bernadette's so we could watch Nellie Fox, Little Louie Aparicio and Ted Kluszewski win the first game of the World Series which they ultimately lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

When the newspapers reported the 1972 trade of Allen to the White Sox, we did not know much about "Richie" Allen, as his name was listed on his baseball card. There was murmuring in the press and in the parlors of Chicago bungalows that Allen was some kind of trouble maker, a potential team jinx.

But it wouldn't be revealed till later how Allen was a victim of racism, a juicy target for the same bigots perplexed and incensed about the ascendancy of Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, Roberto Clemente or any person of color who was better than white players and spoke his mind to the press. And while Allen's defensiveness and independence were sources of pique for fans when he played in Philadelphia, it was inconsequential background noise to Chicagoans: We were starving for a hero.

Even today, I need no photos to remind me of Dick Allen's physical presence when he put on that uniform. Though it's been almost 50 years, his image remains etched in my mind.

At 5'11," he was not that big for a ballplayer and of surprisingly average size for a home run hitter. But his wide shoulders, his erect, perfect posture, whether in the batter's box or in the field, made an imposing impression. At a distance, say, of a thousand yards, when it's impossible to delineate the features of a man's face, I could recognize Dick Allen, standing or walking, by his angle to the earth and sky.

Some say the Cubs' Billy Williams had one of the "sweetest" swings, and I won't argue. But Billy was a lefty and for my money, Allen's right-handed stroke was the most memorable for its poetry and power in motion: Elbows spread, hands at the letters, gripping a 40-ounce beast of a bat held vertically, no one looked more relaxed and confident in the batter's box. And then you knew why when he'd tip that bat forward as the pitch was made and then swing the barrel around in a quick, compact backswing that generated blinding bat speed and power to crush the ball.

No matter the score, no matter the inning, no matter what was happening around you, you stopped what you were doing when Allen, statuesque, faced the pitcher. Each at-bat, we watched, hypnotized, like awaiting the lighted fuse on a stick of dynamite.

Allen was the MVP of the American League that year, with a batting average of.308, a league-leading 37 home runs and 113 RBIs.

Attendance at Comiskey Park nearly doubled during his three-year tenure, quashing any more talk about the Sox moving and building the team's resources for the future.

I was saddened by Dick Allen's death, but I also felt a wave of gratitude and peace, rather like Hemingway's character Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea and how he smiled to himself and was sustained by thoughts of the "great DiMaggio."

For, our baseball heroes tend to remind us of milestones in our own lives, as memories of their grace and perfection allow us to re-experience moments of exquisite pleasure, shared so long ago with my father, my brothers, my softball buddies and my children.

Thank you, No. 15.

• David McGrath, mcgrathd@dupage.edu, is emeritus English professor for College of DuPage and author of SOUTH SIDERS.