Baseball Way Back: Making the Hall of Fame case for Dick Allen

Mike Tollin, the executive producer of "The Last Dance," the Michael Jordan documentary, and I have something in common.

At a young age, we both fell under the spell of Dick Allen.

Tollin, who grew up rooting for the Philadelphia Phillies, was 8 years old when Allen - then billed as Richie Allen - burst on the scene with Gene Mauch's Phils.

Allen had a glorious NL Rookie of the Year season in 1964, batting .318 with 29 homers and 91 RBI.

"He became my hero," Tollin told me when I spoke with him recently.

In December, 1971, the White Sox traded Steve Huntz and Tommy John to the Dodgers for Allen.

It turned out to be just the Tommy John surgery the Sox needed.

As with Tollin eight years earlier, I was captivated by the man whose seemingly effortless greatness and cheeky nonchalance was captured in a Sports Illustrated cover of him smoking a cigarette and juggling baseballs in the Sox dugout.

Allen was more than a hero to me. He was the savior who single-handedly rescued baseball on the South Side.

In 1972, the heavy hitter with a heavy, 40-ounce bat led the league in homers with 37 and in RBI with 113, earning MVP honors.

Allen's game-changing moments included two inside-the-park homers on July 31 against Minnesota and a pinch-hit game-winning walk-off three-run homer in the ninth inning on June 4 to complete a doubleheader sweep of the Yankees.

The Sox, who hadn't enjoyed a winning season since 1967, finished second in the AL West with an 87-67 record. Attendance soared from 495,355 in 1970 to 1,302,527 in 1973.

Unlike Tollin, I never befriended the slugger. One product of their friendship is a documentary Tollin hopes will be released after Allen receives his overdue election into the Hall of Fame.

The Hall of Fame's Golden Days Committee meets in December to decide Allen's fate. He needs 12 out of 16 votes. The last time he was up for consideration, in 2014, he missed by one vote.

One encouraging sign is the Phillies' recent decision to retire his number.

In Tollin's view, modern-day analytics put Allen's Hall-of-Fame qualifications in true perspective.

"If you look at his OPS+, it's right there with Hank Aaron and Willie Mays. And there's an argument to be made that between my years watching him in Philly and your years watching him in Chicago, essentially '64 through '73, for that decade, that he might just have been the best hitter in baseball."

Tollin said Allen's accomplishments are especially impressive considering the obstacles he faced.

When he was playing for the Triple-A Arkansas Travelers in 1963, he became the first Black player to play for the Little Rock minor league team.

Marchers with signs picketed the ballpark and fans hurled racial insults as he returned to the dugout between innings.

"This was a guy who endured through the most unthinkably challenging conditions and he just kept hitting," Tollin said.

Phillies fans turned against Allen in 1965 after he fought with a white teammate named Frank Thomas in response to Thomas' racial taunts.

Tollin said the team sent Thomas packing - he was sold to Houston - and told Allen not to say a word.

He said, "I watched a very polarized Philadelphia treat him badly and essentially boo him out of town."

Tollin said his friendship with Allen started in the Oakland clubhouse in 1977. Tollin was a radio stringer, and Allen was finishing his career with the A's.

"I went in with a microphone and asked him some standard media-type questions, and he treated me like he treated the media," he said.

After leaving the clubhouse, Tollin decided on another approach.

"I put my little cassette deck and my little mini microphone away in a briefcase. I took my sweater off. I untucked my shirt, I mussed up my hair. I hid the briefcase and I walked back in."

He then approached Allen. "Hi, Mr. Allen, my name's Mike Tollin. I'm from Philadelphia and I just wanted to say hello."

Allen smiled and said, "You're from Philadelphia? Oh, I'm sorry about that. Why don't you take the weight off, sit down, have a beer?"

Since then, Allen has appeared in two of Tollin's films, as a baseball scout in "Summer Catch" and a bettor in "Dreamer," a movie about a subject near to Allen's heart, horses.

Tollin said the Pennsylvania connection was also important in the relationship Allen had with Sox manager Chuck Tanner on the South Side.

"He always said Chuck Tanner was from home. Chuck Tanner was from Western Pennsylvania, not too far from the little town that (Allen) grew up in, which is called Wampum. Chuck Tanner knew his mom and called his mom and promised to take good care of him."

Although Allen's bat was important to the Sox, so was his baseball knowledge, Tollin said.

"You talk to Goose Gossage and he'll tell you not only was he the best hitter he has ever seen, but he knew more about baseball than anybody he has ever talked to. Goose says, 'Dick Allen as a hitter taught me more about pitching than any pitcher I have ever talked to.' "

I'm looking forward to learning more about Allen from Tollin's documentary. And I'm hoping the film concludes with Allen's induction in Cooperstown.