Although Dick Allen And Dave Parker Made The Baseball Hall Of Fame, This Was Awful

Forbes

2 days ago

PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA - JULY 27: A tribute board signed by fans for recently deceased Pittsburgh ... More Pirates outfielder Dave Parker who is being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday afternoon is seen before the game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Arizona Diamondbacks at PNC Park on July 27, 2025 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by)
Dick Allen and Dave Parker entered the Baseball Hall of Fame Sunday posthumously when they should have enjoyed their Cooperstown honors while alive and well.
This was avoidable, but it also was predictable.
They suffered for being themselves.
In many ways, Allen and Parker were kindred souls as African American baseball players who operated as free spirits between knocking the daylight out of pitches on a consistent basis.
An occassionally stale game, which often was placed on life support after the Yankee dynasty of Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra of the 1950s, needed the colorful jolt of Allen and Parker during their combined decades of the 1960s through the 1980s, but they were rebels in the minds of the naive.
The naive?
I'm trying to be kind.
Let's get the only significant difference out of the way between Allen and Parker, and it was a big one.
In January 1979, with Parker fresh from grabbing National League Most Valuable Player honors, the Pittsburgh Pirates signed their right fielder with the potent bat, glove and arm to a five-year deal worth $5 million.
Parker became the first professional athlete to receive $1 million per year in Major League Baseball or in any other sport.
Allen barely earned $1 million for his career.
COOPERSTOWN, NEW YORK - JULY 27: Willa Allen, wife of the late Dick Allen, speaks on his behalf ... More during the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony at Clark Sports Center on July 27, 2025 in Cooperstown, New York. (Photo by)
"Baseball was his first love," said Willa Allen, with teary eyes on the Cooperstown stage while delivering the acceptance speech for her husband who died from cancer in December 2020.
Courtesy of one of the heaviest bats for a player in Major League history (42 ounces), Dick Allen won the 1964 National League Rookie of the Year award with the Philadelphia Phillies and the 1972 American League Most Valuable Player award with the Chicago White Sox.
Allen also made seven All-Star Game trips before he retired after the 1977 season. He hit .292 for his career with 351 homers, 1,119 RBI, a .534 slugging percentage and a .378 on-base percentage. He slammed at least 20 homers in 10 seasons, including six years of at least 30 homers.
Among other things, The USA Today said sabermetric stats showed through OPS-plus (on-base plus slugging percentage, adjusted for a player's home ballpark) that Allen ranked ahead of 11 Hall of Fame inductees of his era.
'He used to say, 'I'd have played for nothing,' and I believe he meant it," Willa continued regarding her husband. 'But of course, if you compare today's salary, he played almost for nothing.'
She spoke the truth.
The average salary for a Major League player this season is more than $5 million, and get this: The February after Allen won his AL MVP award, he received what was then the largest baseball salary of all-time after a three-year deal worth $675,000 from the White Sox.
According to Baseball Reference, even if you consider what it called 'incomplete data before 1985' as well as the possible lack of some earned bonuses, Allen made approximately $1 million during a 15-year career through 1977.
Parker played 19 seasons through 1991.
In addition to his league MVP accolades, he collected 2,712 hits and 339 homers, and he won three Gold Gloves, three Silver Slugger awards and two NL batting titles. He was named MVP of the 1979 All-Star game for two rocket throws from right field, where he became the Pirates' latter-day Roberto Clemente.
There also were Parker's two World Series rings.
COOPERSTOWN, NEW YORK - JULY 27: Dick Parker II, son of the late Dave Parker, speaks on his behalf ... More during the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony at Clark Sports Center on July 27, 2025 in Cooperstown, New York. (Photo by)
Parker died in late June after complications from Parkinson's disease, but he composed a poem to be read during his Baseball Hall of Fame induction speech. It was delivered by Dave Parker II, who looked and sounded like his dad.
"Thanks for staying by my side," said Dave Parker II, delivering the words from his father from the podium. "I told y'all Cooperstown would be my last rap, so the star of Dave will be in the sky tonight. Watch it glow. But I didn't lie in my documentary. I told you I wouldn't show."
This crowd laughed. Those other ones abused the older Parker, and even the crowds at his home ballpark in Pittsburgh.
After Parker signed that monster contract for its time in 1979, the UPI wire service reported fans spent the next two seasons throwing various items his way such as 'a bat, a steel valve and a five-pound sack of nuts and bolts at him.'
In 1983, while Parker stood in right field at Pittsburgh's Three River Stadium, he had to dodge a battery.
He was an easy target at 6-foot-5 and 230 pounds.
Allen could relate to the hatred.
PITTSBURGH, PA - 1976: Dick Allen of the Philadelphia Phillies bats against the Pittsburgh Pirates ... More during a Major League Baseball game at Three Rivers Stadium in 1976 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by)
As a 21-year-0ld native of Western Pennsylvania, Allen had to learn how to survive death threats in 1963 while playing for the Phillies' Triple A team in Arkansas. He advanced the next year to the big club in Philadelphia, where all-white teams reigned for a decade after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier in 1947.
The Phillies also were the last NL team with an African American player.
Not surprisingly, Allen spent his opening six full seasons in the Major Leagues – all with the Phillies -- battling racial slurs and his version of items hurled his way from the stands, both home and away.
It led to the guy much smaller than Parker (5-foot-11 and 187 pounds) taking his spot at third base for the Phillies wearing a batting helmet.
Allen and Parker remained themselves.
That ranged from Allen letting Sports Illustrated snap a photo for its cover during the summer of 1972 of the White Sox star juggling baseballs with a cigarette in his mouth to Parker becoming one of the first professional athletes to wear an earring during games.
It was a two-carat diamond.
It was too much for some people.
The same went for Parker's cocaine use and involvement in the Pittsburgh drug trials of 1985. So, during his maximum time of 15 years through 2011 on the Hall of Fame ballots of voters from the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA), he never received more than 24.5% of the required 75% to reach Cooperstown.
In contrast, Allen was victimized by unnamed sources calling him a troublemaker and a bad teammate, and he never got more than 18.9% from BBWAA voters before he dropped off the ballot after 1997.
Dave Parker gave this autographed photo to my nephew, Sam, who worked at one of his Popeyes chicken ... More restaurants in Cincinnati.
I never met Allen, but I dealt with Parker up close and personal enough through the decades to know he was a Hall of Famer on and off the diamond.
We talked often from the time I first began covering baseball for professional newspapers in the late 1970s through his playing retirement in the early 1990s. He later returned to his native Cincinnati, where I grew up as a teenager and where my brother, Dennis, lives with his family.
Parker served for years as the grand marshal to open the Knothole Baseball League in Dennis' community, and my nephew, Sam, used to work at one of his Popeyes chicken restaurants around town.
Sam received an autographed photo from Parker that said, 'To Sam. Continue your excellent work ethic. My best, Dave Parker.'
I used to check both the names of Allen and Parker on my ballot as a BBWAA Hall of Fame voter, but my vote wasn't enough.
It took a special group called the Classic Era Committee to vote Allen and Parker into the Baseball Hall of Fame in December 2024.
It should have happened earlier for both players.
'Although he is not physically here to accept the honor, I assure you he is with us,' said Willa of Dick Allen, and Dave Parker's folks were likely saying the same about the man nicknamed 'The Cobra.'
They were just thrilled their guys made it.
They hadn't a choice.