Hairs vs. Squares Page 18

  Disheartened and frightened by the threats, Allen feared for his safety even on the playing field. He would hear the taunts, look around the stands, and be so frozen with fear that he would pray that a ball wasn’t hit to him. When it was, Allen sometimes found it difficult to move, to raise his arm to catch a liner, or to run and chase it down.

  He considered quitting and returning home, but Era Allen wouldn’t hear of it. He couldn’t come home a quitter, his mother told him. Allen stuck it out and by season’s end had won many of the fans over by batting .297 and belting 33 homers. Little Rock fans even named him “Most Popular Player.”

  Allen made his major league debut at age twenty-one on September 3, 1963, becoming the first black player to wear a Phillies uniform. In 1964, his first full season, Allen powered the Phils’ pennant chase with 13 triples, 29 homers, 91 RBIs, and a league-leading 125 runs scored. He was a unanimous choice for Rookie of the Year but couldn’t prevent Philadelphia from faltering in the stretch and suffering a collapse that allowed St. Louis to surge to the league title and beat the fading Yankees in the World Series.

  The bitter Philly faithful found fault with their superstar on a number of levels. Allen had played outfield, shortstop, second base, and first base in the minors. The Phils, needing to find a place for their young slugger, put him at third, the “hot corner.” It is one of the more demanding defensive positions in baseball and one that was unfamiliar to Allen. He made 41 errors, and Phillies fans didn’t forget. Nor did they forget he fanned a league-leading 138 times. In 1965 he fought teammate Frank Thomas, a fan favorite. Thomas hit Allen with a bat and within hours was released by the club. Phillies brass forbade Allen from telling his side of the story to the media under threat of a fine. When Allen showed up at the stadium that night, fans hurled both angry insults and assorted items at him.

  Everything Allen did seemed to become a cause célèbre. He was accused of paying more attention to his horses than to the horsehide, of drinking, of refusing to take batting practice. Phillies’ fans feud with Allen lasted for five seasons before he was dealt to St. Louis in 1970. Allen would later say he could play anywhere—first, third, left field—anywhere, he added, except Philadelphia.

  In ’71 Allen was traded again, this time to Los Angeles. He collected 23 homers and 90 RBIs and batted .308 in September to help fuel the Dodgers in their division race with San Francisco. Despite the Dodgers’ finishing just a game out of first, Allen was traded yet again, this time to the White Sox for Tommy John, a talented southpaw starter who went 13-16 in ’71, and infielder Steve Huntz.

  Allen was called by some a clubhouse cancer; he wasn’t that, but he was a nonconformist. Dodgers shortstop Maury Wills said Allen was one of those guys who couldn’t go along with the group in everything. Los Angeles teammate Willie Davis thought there was something in Allen’s makeup that made him fight certain things. Davis said he shuddered to think how great Allen could have been had he simply conformed.

  As it was, Allen was great and on his own terms. The late Hall of Fame baseball writer and official baseball historian Jerome Holtzman called Allen “as gifted a ballplayer as there ever was in the major leagues.” There has been a long-running debate whether Allen belongs in baseball’s Hall of Fame. Some consider him the best player not in Cooperstown. Mays said Allen was a Hall of Famer as far as he was concerned.

  The debate over Allen’s Hall of Fame candidacy is one more aspect of a man sabermetrician Bill James rated as the second most controversial player in baseball history, Rogers Hornsby ranking number one. Gossage sees little controversy when it comes to Allen. In his Hall of Fame induction speech, the Goose praised Allen: “In 1972, I had the privilege of playing with Dick Allen. I didn’t know it at the time, but in retrospect, he was the greatest player I ever played with. That’s quite a statement because I played with a lot of great ones. He taught me how to pitch from a hitter’s perspective. He took me under his wing and we would talk for hours on end about pitching. It was amazing.”

  Another former teammate, Phillies third baseman Mike Schmidt, wrote in his autobiography Clearing the Bases that baseball writers claimed Allen divided the clubhouse along racial lines. “That was a lie,” Schmidt wrote. “The truth is that Dick never divided any clubhouse.”

  Caray said the same back in ’72. Despite what Caray referred to as “all this junk about Richie Allen being so tough to get along with,” the slugger had proved to be an asset to the club not only by what he did on the field, Caray said, but also because of his positive influence on teammates.

  There was nothing controversial about Allen’s talent and raw power. In an era marked by great pitching and low batting averages, he posted a .534 slugging average. Enormously strong and quick, he put the full power of his shoulders, chest, and biceps into every blow. Much of the secret of his swing was in his wrists. He would snap it at the ball like a man cracking a whip, as writer William Barry Furlong observed at the time.

  Stories of Allen’s prodigious power sound like tall tales:

  He hit a ball that struck an obstruction one hundred feet high when the ball was 360 feet from home plate and another over a scoreboard fifty feet high and 408 feet from home;

  His drives measured at times between 500 and 565 feet;

  He hammered a home run over the left-center field roof of Connie Mack Stadium. The drive prompted the Pittsburg Pirates Willie Stargell to state, “Now I know why they boo Richie all the time. When he hits a home run, there’s no souvenir.”

  Yankees fans, fearful of Allen’s power in a game at Yankee Stadium, unfurled a banner that read, “Save our monuments! Walk Allen!”

  Gene Mauch, who was Allen’s manager with the Phillies in the early 1960s, said once he wouldn’t be surprised if Allen homered to both left and right field at the same time. “He’ll split the ball in half with his strength,” Mauch said.

  Another manager, Tanner, was at the wheel when Allen in 1972 had arguably the most dominating season by an American League slugger since Babe Ruth. Tanner thought Allen was doing more for the White Sox than any player he had ever seen do for another team. “He’s doing it all,” Tanner said, “at bat, in the field and on the bases.”

  A native of New Castle, Tanner, like Allen, was a product of western Pennsylvania. The two men, whose home towns were just ten miles apart, were family friends, and the slugger once considered surly thrived under Tanner’s laid-back leadership.

  Opposing players paid the price for Allen’s serenity, and American League pitchers were soon scrambling for an effective strategy. Detroit Tigers ace Mickey Lolich thought Allen a scary figure at the plate. When Allen came to bat, he had your attention, Lolich said. Mickey wanted to forget a couple of line drives Allen had hit off him but couldn’t because “they almost killed me.”

  The Sox played ball with a vengeance. It was a hot time, summer in the city, and the backs of the necks of fans on the South Side weren’t the only things getting dirty and gritty. The White Sox were getting down and dirty in the division fight with defending champion Oakland, and Windy City headlines trumpeted the daily battles:

  SOX WIN, ALLEN SLUGS PAIR

  SUPERMAN ALLEN HERO AGAIN

  ALLEN, WOOD LEAD SOX INTO FIRST PLACE

  Forty years later, Roland Hemond, the architect of the Allen trade that was one of the more pivotal in franchise history, remembered Allen’s transformative season with special fondness. Everything a ballplayer could do or should do, Allen did, Hemond said: hit, field, or run the bases. Plus he was terrific with the young players on the team. Hemond called it “one of the most impactful seasons a player ever had.”

  As magnificent as Allen was, he was not alone in leading the White Sox. Wood tied Gaylord Perry for the league lead in wins with 24 and led the AL in starts (49) and innings pitched (376.2). Bahnsen won 21 games in his first season with the Sox; Tom Bradley won 15. Gossage, a future Hall of Famer, and Forster comprised a young righty-lefty fireman tandem that combined for 13 wins. Forster front
ed the bullpen with 29 saves. May contributed power and a .308 batting average; Pat Kelly had a team-best 32 steals.

  Gossage debuted on April 16 in Kansas City, and it wasn’t until September 1 that he would make his first mound appearance in Yankee Stadium. Born and raised in Colorado, he was the son of ardent Yankees fans. When it came time to take the mound in Yankee Stadium, Gossage recalled in 2014 that his legs were shaking so badly, he felt he might “keel over.” Six years later, he was the ace reliever on a Yankees squad that won its second straight World Series. In June 2014 he was on a Yankee Stadium mound again, throwing out the ceremonial first pitch on Old-Timers’ Day at the modern Bronx ballpark and being honored with a plaque in Monument Park.

  “This,” he told the sellout crowd, “is the greatest day I’ve ever had.”

  Gossage and the Sox had many great days in ’72, and the team’s turnaround had actually begun the season before. After dropping 95 games in 1968, 94 in ’69, and 106 in ’70, the franchise was not only losing games, but it was losing fans as well. Home attendance of under 500,000 in 1970 was some 600,000 less than the league average.

  In 1971 Hemond and Tanner collaborated in their first full season together, and the result was an exciting, hustling ball club. Beltin’ Melton belted 33 homers to become the first White Sox player to lead the league in that department, and the Sox finished just four games under .500. By the end of the season they were winning not just games, but also the hearts of a previously disheartened fan base. Attendance at Comiskey Park increased by 340,000, and the positive-thinking Hemond and Tanner went into the winter meetings believing they were only a couple of impact players away from contending for a title.

  They acquired both pieces they needed on December 2, 1971, one of the landmark dates in franchise history. Bahnsen was brought over from the Yankees for talented infielder Rich McKinney, and Allen was obtained from the Dodgers.

  Initially both Allen and Chicago sports fans were wary of the deal. Allen idolized Jackie Robinson and wanted to remain a Dodger. Sox fans were fully aware the nomadic Allen was now with his fourth team in as many seasons and that he was said to be nonchalant toward some of the game’s time-honored traditions.

  There was one other thing that gave the veteran Allen pause in the spring of ’72: the Sox’s youth at key positions. The Sox were seventeen years old at second, eighteen years old at shortstop. Allen thought “This is a high school team.”

  When the Sox lost their first three games, Allen told Tanner he was ready to pack his bags and head home. Tanner pulled Allen into his office for a pep talk. “We’ll do it together,” Tanner told Allen, meaning the two men would help mentor the young players—Gossage, May, Orta, et al.

  Tanner recalled years later how Allen became the leader of the team, the manager on the field. “He took care of the young kids, took them under his wing,” Tanner said. “And he played every game as if it was his last day on earth.”

  And so did the entire team, leading Allen to believe the Sox did more with enthusiasm than experience. “We became tighter than pantyhose two sizes too small,” he said.

  That magical summer on the South Side saved the Sox franchise. There had been talk that the Windy City Sox could be gone with the wind. Hemond’s wheeling and dealing helped bring the buzz back to the old ball park. Home games at classic Comiskey saw the Sox take the field in equally classic uniforms—bright red pinstripes with the iconic “Sox” script over the chest, red numbers front and back, a White Sox patch on the sleeve, a red cap with a variation of the Sox script, red belt, and red cleats.

  Also classic were Caray’s radio calls. Harry Christopher Carabina broadcast Cardinals games during their glory years in the 1960s, was fired following the 1969 season, and spent 1970 with the A’s before he and owner Charlie Finley parted ways. Finley didn’t care for Caray’s broadcasting style—“That [crap] he pulled in St. Louis didn’t go over here,” Finley spat—and Caray grew tired of his boss’s meddling.

  Hired by the White Sox in 1971, Caray quickly became a fan favorite among the South Side faithful, who saw him as one of their own. Like Bob Prince in Pittsburgh and Russ Hodges with the Giants in New York and then San Francisco, Caray was considered a fan’s broadcaster. Like many of the masses, he was a bleacher creature; on hot days he would broadcast afternoon games bare-chested from Comiskey’s center-field bleachers, his trusty fishing net by his side to snare home runs.

  Caray held a lifelong fascination with unusual names. Speaking one day of the Dodgers’ Manny Mota, Caray informed his audience that “Mota spelled backwards is atom. . . . And that’s where he hit, right at ’im.” His offhanded insights, garrulous voice, and oversized glasses became part of his legend and made for good-natured fodder for impersonators, the most famous being Will Ferrell in skits on Saturday Night Live.

  While Cubs fans reveled in Wrigley Field, with its brick walls and ivy in the outfield, White Sox supporters streamed into Comiskey Park, the oldest baseball stadium in use at the time. Opened on July 1, 1910, predating Fenway Park by two years and Wrigley by six, Comiskey Park—later renamed White Sox Park—was home to the Sox for eighty-one years until their final game on September 30, 1990.

  Original plans called for Comiskey to have a Romanesque design with a cantilever upper deck. Construction costs, however, led to a more conservative two-tier grandstand extending down both baselines and a single level of wooden bleachers beyond the outfield wall. A red-brick façade made the stadium look from the outside like a factory. Through the years Comiskey Park was altered in various ways—its seating capacity was enlarged, an exploding scoreboard complete with fireworks and aerial bombs was installed, and moveable box seats were added and removed as home plate was moved back and forth to increase the number of home runs.

  One of the more startling renovations came in 1969, when Astroturf was installed in the infield to cut field maintenance costs. Comiskey became the only park in the majors with an Astroturf infield and an outfield of God’s green grass.

  Allen, known for his dry quips, uttered what remains the most cutting criticism of artificial grass: “If a horse won’t eat it,” he said, “I don’t want to play on it.”

  The Sox infield may have been artificial, but the challenge to the A’s was authentic. Even with Beltin’ Melton sidelined by a back injury suffered the previous November when he fell from his roof protecting his three-year-old son Bill, Chicago still owned a lead of one and a half games over Oakland as late as August 26. Wilbur Wood was a big reason why.

  Winning over twenty games for the second straight season, the wily knuckleballer owed much of his success to his mentality. He was still a relief pitcher at heart, he said, pitching one batter at a time rather than one game at a time.

  Despite a physical appearance that Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist Jack Griffin once compared to “the guy who just won the beer frame,” Wood was remarkably resilient. In 1971, after beginning the season as a reliever and spot starter, he moved into the rotation and worked twelve straight weeks on a two-day rest basis; in one stretch in ’72 Wood threw in four games in ten days. Making an AL record-tying 49 starts, completing 20 of them, and throwing 376 2/3 innings, Wood put up numbers not seen since the deadball era. He became a modern-day Big Ed Walsh, who had started a record 49 games for the White Sox in 1908, had won 40 of them, and had hurled 464 innings.

  Wood’s reliever mentality and rubber arm allowed Tanner to do something unprecedented in modern times: work with a three-man starting staff. The “Great Trio”—Wood, Bahnsen (43 starts) and Bradley (40 starts)—combined for 132 starts in ’72. The rest of the staff combined for all of 24 starts.

  The quick-start system was not new to Chisox strategists. Chicago pitching coach Johnny Sain helped hurl the Boston Braves to the 1948 pennant by working nine complete games with only two days’ rest between each. Sain won 24 games, and the Braves won the pennant. He shared the heavy lifting with another famous iron arm, Warren Spahn, and the Braves became known for their �
��Spahn and Sain and two days of rain” strategy.

  “There’s nothing I have to do for Wilbur,” Sain said then, “except give him a ball before the game and give him a cigar after it.”

  Wood’s cigar concealed the gap left by a missing tooth. At 6 feet, 180 pounds, the thirty-year-old southpaw wasn’t lean or muscular. He was a little old and a little portly. With his shirttail protruding from his pants, his wheat-colored hair receding beneath his bright red cap, and his casual throwing motion, the man nicknamed “Wilbah” could have passed for a father playing catch with his son in the yard.

  Wood had an indestructible temperament. When the Indians retaliated against the White Sox’s hazing of Perry by asking the umpires to shake down Wood—“Cut off his knuckles!” Tribe third baseman Buddy Bell shouted—Wilbur was unfazed. He carried that mindset to the mound and, armed with a dancing knuckle ball that he first began throwing in junior high, baffled batters. Wood had just one high-caliber pitch, but he threw it relentlessly.

  “He throws that knuckleball nice and easy,” Tanner said then. “It’s no strain on his arm.”

  Wood had learned to throw the knuckleball by mistake. He was twelve years old, watching his father throw a palm ball. Like the knuckler, the palm ball approached the plate without rotating. Wilbur wanted to do everything his dad did, so he tried imitating his palm ball. Because the twelve-year-old Wood’s hands were too small to wrap around the ball as completely as his father’s could, the younger Wood’s pitch came out a knuckle ball. It eventually carried him on its fluttering, unpredictable wings to the big leagues.

  When his knuckle ball was working, Wood believed there wasn’t anybody who could beat him. When it wasn’t working, there wasn’t anybody he thought he could beat. Wood won three straight decisions against the A’s in ’72, outdueling Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers, and Vida Blue in succession.