DALLAS — The celebration started the moment National Baseball Hall of Fame President Josh Rawitch said “1963 to 1977” as he began to unveil the results of the classic baseball era committee voting on television.
Richard Allen Jr. jumped out of his seat and was swallowed in a sea of hugs.
His father, the late Dick Allen, had just been elected into the Hall of Fame.
“I wanted to hear it, I wanted to see it,” Allen said at a watch party at the Hilton Anatole, where the MLB winter meetings are taking place. “We saw it, just so much to take in.
“The reaction was a big sigh of relief, mainly. Long overdue, long overdue.”
Dick Allen’s journey to Cooperstown included three All-Star seasons with the Chicago White Sox, where he earned the American League Most Valuable Player award in 1972.
“Dick Allen’s historic exploits during his seasons with the White Sox in 1972-74 enjoy a legendary, almost mythical status across this city and within the Sox organization even to this day,” Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf said in a statement. “Dick was just that good and that dominant in the batter’s box. His prodigious strength and jaw-dropping power are still talked about to this day.”
Allen received 13 out of a possible 16 committee votes (81 percent) on Sunday to earn enshrinement in the Class of 2025 — clearing the 75 percent threshold. He will be joined by Dave Parker, who received 14 votes.
The committee considered players, managers, umpires and executives whose greatest contributions to the sport were before 1980.
Allen, who died in 2020 at age 78, had 351 home runs, 1,119 RBIs and a .292 career average during a 15-year major-league career with the Philadelphia Phillies (1963-69, ’75-76), St. Louis Cardinals (1970), Los Angeles Dodgers (1971), Sox (1972-74) and Oakland Athletics (1977). During his 11-year peak (1964-74), Allen’s 165 OPS+ was the top in baseball.
He earned seven All-Star selections, including three with the Sox.
After navigating through Philadelphia’s minor-league system, including facing racism while breaking the color barrier in the state at Triple-A Little Rock, Ark., Allen joined the Phillies late in 1963. The next season, he had 29 home runs, 91 RBIs and 125 runs — and also hit 13 triples — while batting .318 on the way to being named the National League Rookie of the Year.
Allen earned All-Star selections from 1965-67 with the Phillies. He was traded to St. Louis ahead of the 1970 season and the Cardinals dealt him to the Dodgers after that year.
The Sox acquired him in a December 1971 trade, sending Tommy John and Steve Huntz to the Dodgers.
Allen hit .307 with 85 home runs and 242 RBIs in his three years with the Sox, including a .308 average with 37 home runs, 113 RBIs, 99 walks and a .603 slugging percentage during his MVP season.
“Dick’s 1972 Most Valuable Player-winning season remains one of the best ever produced by any player in a White Sox uniform, particularly his league-leading 37 home runs in what at the time was a very pitcher-friendly ballpark,” Reinsdorf said in the statement.
He was credited with reviving a franchise that had possibly been on the verge of relocating.
“It’s wonderful to see Dick get elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame,” Allen’s former teammate and White Sox TV analyst Steve Stone said in a statement. “Being enshrined in Cooperstown is the ultimate individual honor for a player. It’s well deserved, and I’m sorry he’s not here to see this great honor.”
Allen spent two more years in Philadelphia and his final season with the Athletics. His best showing while on the BBWAA ballot for the Hall of Fame was 18.9 percent. He fell one vote shy of election in various committee votes for the Hall of Fame held late in 2014 and 2021.
“At one point I kind of lost some faith,” Richard Allen Jr. said. “The numbers that are being put up today would sort of lower his numbers and make him (fall) on this home run list. You’ll hear things like ‘So and so has surpassed Dick Allen with 352 home runs’ and that just drops him down. So, yeah, I kind of thought that eventually he’d be forgotten.”
Instead, he will forever be known as a Hall of Famer. Induction will take place on July 27.
Richard Allen Jr. said his son, Richard III, told him he had a “feeling” good news was on the way.
The elder Allen’s response: “Well, let’s see, let’s see.”
They saw and heard the result they’d long been waiting for.
“It just makes it that much more exciting, just waiting that long,” Allen said. “But, man, this is a long time coming. It really, really was.”
