Sunday, September 13, 2009

Dick Allen for the Hall

One of Daddy D's all-time favorite nicknames is "Choo-choo," as in Choo-choo Coleman. He wants me to post on Coleman so bad he sent me a few Choo-choos to post.

However, there are a few things that need to come before. While looking up some info on Choo-choo I came across one of those abandoned message boards you'll find from time to time: established 2001, a thread from '03, nothing new since '04. At one point folks were exchanging "Choo-choo Coleman was so stupid..." stories when someone stated something to the effect that Coleman, like Dick Allen, came up in the Phillies farm system, positing that Coleman, like Allen, learned to be curt and stand-offish with reporters, managers, and fans alike because of his experience coming up through the minors.

There's even a paper written about it, here. It ain't for the faint of heart.
I got this card from the .50 cent bin at the local, and will admit that until I took a hard look at the stats I had no idea how good he was. Lifetime OPS of .912, OPS+ 156. Dude had power and a good bit of speed. If you check out his Baseball Ref page, towards the bottom you'll see he's a border-line HOFer based on the various Bill James smell tests. In fact, there's a blog dedicated to getting him in: Dick Allen Hall of Fame.

If you look around a bit, there are a lot of stories about Allen and his bad attitude, (see Rice, Jim) and I imagine that has a lot to do with his not being in the HOF, as it did with Rice until this year. Hopefully that will be corrected soon. And I say that as someone who has disliked the Phillies from the 80's to the present, so I'm not pulling for one of "my guys."

Have a great one!

2 comments:

  1. I never had the chance to meet Dick Allen, but an attitude comparison to Jim Rice aint a good thing... Dude could hit though, no doubt... Thats a real nice card for 50 cents

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'd vote for Dick Allen, if I could. He shed off the bad vibes in Philadelphia to excel in Chicago. He is still thought of fondly there. And that man could hit!

    ReplyDelete