Make Your Argument

[AstrosFan]

This is just a way to pass the time, so maybe a mod will insist on moving it to Between Innings, but since we'll be discussing players' Hall of Fame candidacy here, I think it fits. Since Dick Allen seems to be getting the most attention for title of "Best eligible player outside the Hall," we'll start with him. I need two people, one to argue for Allen's election, and one to argue against. I strongly suggest you don't volunteer to argue a side you don't support. Each person will present his argument. Once the arguments have been made, anyone interested, besides the people who have debated, casts their vote, not for whether they think Allen belongs or not, but for who made the strongest argument. Whoever wins the debate chooses the next candidate. This thread will be for the arguments, a separate one will be made as a poll thread for people to vote on.

[Wade8813]

I like the idea, but I'm not going to take sides at the moment. I don't know enough about him to present a good case.

[STLCards2]

Considering he lead the league in OPS like 4 or 5 times, I am interested in hearing a good case against him.

[EvanAparra]

I think Chris and Bill Burgess can do well in the Dick Allen arguement.

[EvanAparra]

Im sure we could get a good one going about Blyleven, although i dont know who would want the task of argueing against him.

Or we can get JimAbbott in here to argue against Koufax.

[Erik Bedard]

Not even going to try, because Chris and Bill will beat me any time.

Plus, Allen is a player I don't know all that much about, and any argument I did make would be flawed and I'd look like a fool.

[AstrosFan]

If you do decide to present an argument, you get one post. This is not a debate. So make your case count.

[EvanAparra]

If you do decide to present an argument, you get one post. This is not a debate. So make your case count.

I think you should get it started, since no one is stepping up.

[538280]

Just to start the discussion:

Yeah, the 156 OPS+ in the 1960s and 1970s isn't good enough. The 140 rel. SLG isn't good enough. The fact he is second in 3 year Win Shares peak among all 1B in the NBJHBBA, ahead of Jimmie Foxx, that's just not HOF matierial.

I've shown it before, his peak EqAs are just about the same as Ty Cobb.

Based on Bill James' rating system he introduces in his New Historical Baseball Abstract, Allen rates 2nd all time among first basemen.

You say he was a great fielding 1B? I must say, that's the first time I've ever heard that. From what I've read, he was considered to only be fair with the glove. But, he still was a much more valuable defensive player than most other 1B, simply because he played a lot of third base.

Eyewitness opinions are also in his favor. Allen was always the center of attention on any team he was on, not only because of his temperment, but also because he just had so much talent. People would see him and just go "wow, that guy can hit!". Look at what Chuck Tanner had to say about him:

"He was the greatest player I ever managed, and what he did for us in Chicago was amazing. In Pittsburgh I had guys like Willie Stargell, Dave Parker, Phil Garner, Bill Madlock, but in Chicago it was Dick Allen and, what, Bill Melton? There just wasn't a lot of talent there. With Dick -- well, we were able to battle the Oakland A's, one of the greatest teams ever. Without him we simply weren't a first division team."

See that? He says Dick Allen was the kind of player who could take a team with almost no talent and transform them into winners. The stats certainly support that-just look at the Win Shares system. Dick Allen was worth in his career a little more than 30 Win Shares per season (his per season mark is better than any 1B but Gehrig, I may add). Each Win Share is one third of a win so that means Allen by himself was worth about 10 wins. 10 Wins is a huge thing. It's enough to transform a mediocre team into a pennant winner. That's what Dick Allen was worth his whole career.

Many of his detractors will look at his traditional stats and say they're not quite up to par. Only one season with 40 HRs, only 3 100 RBI years, only once over 200 hits, etc. Well, that is of course ridiculous. Allen played in one of the toughest hitting eras of all time. The league average OPS in his time was .706. For those who find relative stats too complicated, all you need to do is look at his performance in league leads. Allen was top 10 in BA 6 times, and never led despite finishing top 5 three of those years. He led in OBP twice, SLG three times, OPS four times (he finished top 10 in OPS every single full season of his career), runs scored once, home runs twice, RBI once, and runs created three times. Quite a good index of league leads. No question Allen was a fantastic hitter despite his less than eye popping traditional stats.

If relative stats are your bag, Allen is one of the best all time. I already mentioned his OPS+. It is fifth all time among players who played mostly post 1950.

A critiscism may be that his stregths were all centered around slugging. Allen certainly was a tremendous slugger, but he had speed and contact skills as well. He truly was a well rounded hitter. For a player who was primarily a 1B, his speed was very good. He finished top 10 in SBs twice, he led the league in triples once and was top 10 6 times, he also led in power/speed once.

But the biggest criticism against Allen-and the one that probably is the most legitimate-is the claim that he was a horrible teammate and hurt his teams as much as he helped them. Bill James wrote a scathing article in his book The Politics of Glory which says the exact same thing.

Craig Wright once wrote an article which examined this, to see if Allen was really as horrible a clubhouse influence as many claimed that he was. Wright interviewed his former manager Gene Mauch, and Mauch had this to say about Allen:

When asked if Allen was a clubhouse lawyer who distracted teammates:

"Never. His teammates always liked him. You could go forever and never meet a more charming fellow."

"He wasn't doing anything to hurt his teammates play of the game, and he didn't involve his teammates in his problems. When he was personally rebellious, he didn't try to bring other players into it."

One of the main things people say when they talk about how bad a person Allen was was how he got into a fight with Frank Thomas in the 1964 season. They claim this upset the Phillies that year and set the stage for their later collapse. Pat Corrales (former MLB player who played a bit on the Phillies in 1964 and was on the team when the fight occured) says this about the incident, though:

"It had really started earlier on our road trip in Chicago. Thomas was your tough
bully type, and he had been picking on Johnny Briggs [21-year-old black outfielder],
saying `Boy this' and `Boy that.' Dick didn't go for that, and there were some words
between them. We get back to Philly, and during early BP I'm down the line talking
with Mauch, when we see this commotion down at the cage. They were just pulling
them apart at this point, after Thomas swung the bat. During the fight, Thomas had
hit Dick with a bat -- on the shoulder."
The fight bothered Thomas so much that in the following game he hit his first homer
of the year, but his career continued to slide away. He finished the year as a weak
reserve with Houston and Milwaukee, hitting .187 in 91 ABs.
When Mauch told Allen that Thomas was being put on irrevocable waivers, Dick
protested on Frank's behalf. Mauch ordered Allen and his teammates not to speak to
the press about the fight and backed it up with a threat of stiff fines. That was
unfortunate as the press and the fans heard just Thomas's side, and they did not
take kindly to a young black guy popping a white veteran. Mauch told me, "They
really turned on him [Allen] after the Thomas fight. From there, if he did one little
thing wrong, they would see it as so much worse because it was Allen. They got it in
their heads that this was a bad guy, and they booed his every move."

Corrales then goes on to say this:

"But the view of the fans and the press was not the view in the clubhouse. Both
Mauch and Corrales saw no effect on team morale, and Corrales noted that his
teammates backed Allen in this dispute. In the book Crash, teammate Johnny
Callison said, "Thomas rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Mauch wanted him
gone -- and here was his excuse. ... Thomas got himself fired when he swung that
bat at Richie. In baseball you don't swing a bat at another player -- ever."

You reserve the right to think what you want. I just think it's natural that someone who's an ardent Dick Allen supporter, like myself, to question you on your belief and ask you to justify it. And, sorry, if all you can come up with is "he just didn't seem like a HOFer" then I can't accept that at all.

We need to get beyond our gut reactions, and look at what a player actually accomplished. There are many players who may seem less impressive in person, but when you get to looking at what they're actually done to help their team you find their resume is VERY impressive. You're not the first person who saw Dick Allen to say this to me, and I suspect that, because of that and the backgroud research I"ve done on him, the media never portrayed him like they should have.

Dick Allen was a subject of extreme racism in his first years as a player, coming up through the minor leagues. Allen played minor league baseball for the Phillies' farm team in Little Rock, Arkansas. Now obviously this was not an easy thing for a VERY talented black prospect to be the star of a minor league team in Arkansas. Young Dick (he doesn't want us to call him Richie, you know!) was not a bad guy, but sometimes a bit hot tempered, and as you can expect he did not always react well to the racism. The media, like the always do, especially when they were out to get him as is with his race, teared him apart. This is NOT something you should be holding against him.

When he went to Philadelphia he was again confronted with racial problems-this time with Frank Thomas, an outfielder the Phillies had picked up. Thomas was a big white man who had already had a decent career in the big leagues. He was making racial comments towards young outfielder Johnny Briggs. Dick did not take too kindly to this, and jumped in to help Briggs. It turned out to be a huge brawl between him and Thomas. This is how then backup Phillies catcher Pat Corrales described the fight:

"It had really started earlier on our road trip in Chicago. Thomas was your tough
bully type, and he had been picking on Johnny Briggs [21-year-old black outfielder],
saying `Boy this' and `Boy that.' Dick didn't go for that, and there were some words
between them. We get back to Philly, and during early BP I'm down the line talking
with Mauch, when we see this commotion down at the cage. They were just pulling
them apart at this point, after Thomas swung the bat. During the fight, Thomas had
hit Dick with a bat -- on the shoulder."

That is probably the most publicized bad event of Allen's career, he supposedly stalled the Phillies from building off their somewhat successful 1964 (though they did blow the pennant that year). Not only do Allen's actions actually seem admirable according to those who were actually there, but that explanation is lacking in factual basis anyway. It happened in July, well into the 1965 season already to begin with, and the team was already doing worse than they had the previous season, and there was no forseen amount that they did worse after the fight. Craig Wright makes this chart showing how they did before and after the fight:

Phillies before and after Allen/Thomas fight:
.............W......L......Pct.
Before....40.....35.....526
After......45.....41.....523

That incident was really tough on Allen for the rest of his career. Gene Mauch sums that up well:

When Mauch told Allen that Thomas was being put on irrevocable waivers, Dick
protested on Frank's behalf. Mauch ordered Allen and his teammates not to speak to
the press about the fight and backed it up with a threat of stiff fines. That was
unfortunate as the press and the fans heard just Thomas's side, and they did not
take kindly to a young black guy popping a white veteran. Mauch told me, "They
really turned on him [Allen] after the Thomas fight. From there, if he did one little
thing wrong, they would see it as so much worse because it was Allen. They got it in
their heads that this was a bad guy, and they booed his every move."

This is why many people did not think of Dick Allen as a HOFer in his time. They were caught up in flat out wrong media reports, which painted him out to be the biggest SOB the game had ever seen. We should owe it to Allen to judge him on his actual accomplishments-and those ARE unquestionably of HOF quality as I've already shown.


So, overall, at least according to the people who were right at the scene and knew Dick personally, Allen was not nearly the clubhouse distraction that he was made out to be. His reputation was probably undeserved, and it shouldn't hurt his HOF chances.

I'm glad you respect Dick Allen-but really, he should be in the HOF, no question.

[AstrosFan]

Chris, I would like to see what your sources are; you mention Crash, but I can't tell whether every quote mentioned comes from that book. Second, who are you responding to? Your post suggests that there is a person who has presented an argument in this thread against Allen that you need to answer, and I see no such argument.

[EvanAparra]

Well hes pretty much responding to what a person would have said

[538280]

Chris, I would like to see what your sources are; you mention Crash, but I can't tell whether every quote mentioned comes from that book. Second, who are you responding to? Your post suggests that there is a person who has presented an argument in this thread against Allen that you need to answer, and I see no such argument.

Some of that post was from past posts I have made about Allen, so it may sound like it was responding to someone. Just about all of the quotes I cited were from an article Craig Wright wrote about Allen:

http://www.expressfan.com/dickallenhof/docs/anotherview.pdf

[AstrosFan]

It looks like Chris is going unchallenged here, so I think we should try a new player. Since he presented an argument, he gets to choose the player. If anyone does take up the side against Allen, I'll start the poll.

[BoSox Rule]

I think Ron Santo is the best, but Allen should CLEARLY be in.

[538280]

It looks like Chris is going unchallenged here, so I think we should try a new player. Since he presented an argument, he gets to choose the player. If anyone does take up the side against Allen, I'll start the poll.

There really isn't much of a side against Allen outside of the ignorant "his numbers aren't good enough" we get every once in a while from people who don't understand context adjustments.

New player? I don't know, there are lots of guys who I have presented an argument for in the past, and more who I haven't but could do now. I'll make a short case for Gene Tenace, I guess.

Gene Tenace was a primary catcher in his career. He wasn't a great catcher, but he wasn't a bad one either, certainly adequate enough to play the position. His bat, though, was one of the greatest of all time for that position. Though he hit .241 for his career, it was a VERY loud .241, and it came in a low run scoring era and park. His on base percentage (.388) and slugging percentage (.429), both of which correlate with run scoring much better and are much more important statistics than batting average, both are very good, especially in context of his time. His 135 OPS+, OPS+ basically compares a player's OBP and SLG to the league is average, is second all time from a primary catcher, behind only Mike Piazza. And while his defense wasn't great and he spent some time at first, it wasn't like he was an awful catcher; he was probably better than Piazza was actually. He also was a great World Series performer and played for some of the best teams of all time. Gene Tenace should be in the HOF.

[538280]

Why is there no interest here? I think it is a good topic and thread idea.

[honus14]

The real knock on Allen always was that you didn't know whether he would show up. If he felt like heading off to the track for an afternoon or two, you were a player short. If he felt like you didn't love him, he'd "retire" and disappear for a while. After a couple of years of this, the other players generally started feeling like they could get away with it, too, and the whole thing would go to hell. And in Chicago, Chuck Tanner, the ultimate Dr.-Everything-Will-Be-Alright, would smile through it all.

What he did on the field, I think, deserves enshrinement. He's on my Diamond Mind team, for pete's sake. But if I had an actual physical baseball team and had the opportunity to sign the real person, Richard Allen, I wouldn't do it.

[538280]

The real knock on Allen always was that you didn't know whether he would show up. If he felt like heading off to the track for an afternoon or two, you were a player short. If he felt like you didn't love him, he'd "retire" and disappear for a while. After a couple of years of this, the other players generally started feeling like they could get away with it, too, and the whole thing would go to hell. And in Chicago, Chuck Tanner, the ultimate Dr.-Everything-Will-Be-Alright, would smile through it all.

What he did on the field, I think, deserves enshrinement. He's on my Diamond Mind team, for pete's sake. But if I had an actual physical baseball team and had the opportunity to sign the real person, Richard Allen, I wouldn't do it.

When exactly did Allen "head off to the track" for a few games? If you can provide a real example then that's fine-but I haven't seen much actual evidence that Allen ever REALLY did anything like that, outside of the millions of blanket statements made by Bill James in The Politics of Glory.

As far as Allen "retiring", maybe Tanner did downplay it, but certainly when he was quoted about it, he said Allen talked to him numerously about it before he did it, and that it was largely motivated by injuries.

I don't think Allen was necessarily a great guy or a guy who was a tremendous clubhouse influence. I do think, though, that to claim he doesn't deserve the HOF because of this, given his credentials, he had better be BY FAR the worst anyone's ever seen for intangibles, and it seems to be based on what I've read about Allen that all of these claims have been very exaggerated.

[honus14]

When exactly did Allen "head off to the track" for a few games? If you can provide a real example then that's fine-but I haven't seen much actual evidence that Allen ever REALLY did anything like that, outside of the millions of blanket statements made by Bill James in The Politics of Glory.
I'd have to search the newspapers; my statement is based on personal memories from that time. Everyone talked about it. I remember my cousin, specifically, who was (and is) a huge Sox fan talking about what an idiot he was.