Dick Allen and Dave Parker, Hall of Famers at long last: What we learned from their election

There is something so fitting about the thought of the Hall of Fame plaques of Dick Allen and Dave Parker hanging side by side forever in the plaque gallery in Cooperstown, N.Y.

They were towering figures from a very different time. They looked and felt like giants as they filled up the batter’s boxes of America … wheeling their mammoth Louisville Sluggers … terrifying pitchers from coast to coast … putting up breathtaking numbers … each of them collecting MVP trophies in the ancient baseball times of the 1970s.

So think how hard it is to lose sight of men like that. But somehow, we did. Their wait for that Hall of Fame moment went on for years, for decades — until finally, the Classic Baseball Era Committee held an election Sunday that will send those two forgotten giants to Cooperstown next July.

What took so long? That was the question that echoed through the night, along with so many powerful emotions. So let’s dig into that — and discuss …

What we learned from the Classic Era Committee election

1. Dick Allen: There is crying in baseball

Dick Allen was the 1964 NL Rookie of the Year. (Associated Press)

With all due respect to Dave Parker, I’m going to begin this column writing about Dick Allen, because for me, his election is personal. He changed my life. I often wonder if I would ever have become a baseball writer if it weren’t for Dick Allen.

When I was a kid growing up in Philadelphia, he wasn’t just my favorite player. He was my first favorite player. I wasn’t alone. He made me a baseball fan. He turned my friends into baseball fans. He did things we didn’t know humans could do. He hit transcontinental long balls we didn’t know humans could hit.

So the news of Allen’s long-overdue election to the Hall of Fame was as thrilling as it was heart-tugging. You could hear it in the sobs of joy that overcame John Middleton, the Phillies’ managing general partner, as he tried to put Allen’s triumph into words Sunday night.

When his phone rang with the news, “I started crying,” Middleton said, the tears flowing again. “The only words that came out were, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe it.’ I could hardly talk. I never thought this moment would actually occur. I don’t know if there are words for that.

“Maybe there’s some great poet who could put those feelings into words,” Middleton went on, his voice cracking as he tried to express the meaning of this moment. “But for me, it’s just a wave of emotion. And every time I talk about it, I just get emotional again.”

That emotion springs from a very real place. It springs from the sadness that Allen didn’t live to celebrate this moment. He died, at age 78, on Dec. 7, 2020 — on the very day that, if it weren’t for the pandemic, a previous version of the Veterans Committee might have been meeting to elect him.

But that emotion also springs from how close he’d come to election — two times. He is believed to be the only player ever to miss by one vote twice.

The first time was 10 years ago, when he was still very much alive and well. The second time was three Decembers ago, when the Golden Era Committee gathered a year after his death and elected Gil Hodges, Tony Oliva, Jim Kaat and Minnie Minoso … but ran out of votes for Dick Allen.

So the closest Allen came to feeling this kind of joy and validation came on Sept. 3, 2020, when Middleton and the Phillies did something they’d never before done for a player who was not a Hall of Famer: They retired Dick Allen’s number, in a moving pregame ceremony.

They’d hoped it would be a prelude to his Induction Day. Instead, as his close friend, filmmaker Mike Tollin, would put it, “that was Dick’s Cooperstown moment.”

“The joy of what we did in September of 2020 was because he was there,” Middleton said, “and he could experience it, and he could see and feel the adulation, and the respect, and the love, and the warmth of that moment … and to be able to just bask in it and revel in it and enjoy it.

“This is a great moment,” Middleton said. “But it’s a moment without him. And that makes it different — for us, for me, for his family, for Mike, for all of us. Everybody has different beliefs, but I believe in heaven. So there’s a part of me that believes that Dick knows what happened today.”

GO DEEPER

The greatness of Dick Allen, and what might have been

2. A Hall of Famer for these times, not those times

On so many levels, it makes no sense that a man could go 47 years without a hit and only then get elected to the Hall of Fame. But welcome to modern Hall of Fame voting. It’s always something. But in Dick Allen’s case, I think there’s actually a logical explanation.

In his time, we didn’t have the tools that we have now to measure the greatness of players like him. So how did we measure it? We did what folks had done for a century.

We counted.

Just not high enough.

If the definition of “Hall of Fame slugger” was 500 homers, Dick Allen was not your man. If the definition of “Hall of Fame hit machine” was 3,000 hits, he wasn’t even close.

His 351st and final homer came on May 17, 1977 — a ridiculous 17,372 days before he got elected. His 1,848th and final hit came five weeks later, on June 19, 1977. That was 17,339 days ago.

So for all those days, all those years, his numbers were stuck in time. Who knew that they were merely stuck in his time, not ours.

Nowadays, back here in our time, we’re so much better at this. So maybe Allen never changed. But luckily for him, we did. And when we looked at him again, through the measuring sticks we now use every day, it’s amazing how his true greatness came into focus.

“There’s just something about OPS,” Tollin said. “OPS changed everything. OPS was the catch-all. OPS+ was really the catch-all.”

Right! Just look at Allen’s career through the prism of OPS —which combines a player’s on base percentage and slugging percentage. Then factor in OPS+ — which adjusts his OPS for ballpark factors and stacks it up against the era he played in. Just do that, and you see exactly why Dick Allen is now a Hall of Famer.

You merely have to size up how Allen compared with the Best of the Best during his 11-year peak, from 1964-74 — and there’s no longer much to debate:

OPS+, 1964-74

1. Dick Allen 165
2. Willie McCovey 161
3. Henry Aaron 159
4. Frank Robinson 159

OPS, 1964-74

1. Henry Aaron .941
2. Dick Allen .940
3. Willie McCovey .937

SLUGGING PCT, 1964-74

1. Henry Aaron .561
2. Dick Allen .554
3. Willie McCovey .541
4. Willie Stargell .541

That’s all legends … and him, all Hall of Famers … and him. And now he’s one of them, because it’s about time he is. But one more thing. Want to put those numbers into an even better perspective? Let’s compare them to the players you’re watching today. You probably think they’re pretty good, right?

But you know how many active players have ever had an 11-year stretch in which they matched or beat the numbers of Allen’s best 11 seasons — a .940 OPS (or better), a .554 slugging percentage (or better), an OPS 65 percent above league average (or better)? Exactly one: the young Mike Trout. But that’s it.

Aaron Judge might get there someday. Shohei Ohtani might get there. Juan ($765 Million Man) Soto might get there. But none of them have played 11 seasons in the big leagues yet. So get back to me when they do, OK?

But of the other active players who have played 11 seasons or more, none are even close to a 165 OPS+ for an 11-year span. Not Freddie Freeman. Not Bryce Harper. Not Mookie Betts. And they’re all on their way to Cooperstown.

So how did Dick Allen get elected all these years later? That’s how. We know what that sort of greatness looks like now. We just had to stop counting.

GO DEEPER

Dick Allen’s numbers haven’t changed, but how we view them should: Jayson Stark

3. Dave Parker and the power of the peak

Dave Parker played for the Pirates from 1973-83. His five-year peak from 1975-79 was a sight to behold. (Focus on Sport / Getty Images)

It wasn’t Dave Parker’s 2,712 hits that got him elected to the Hall of Fame. It wasn’t his .290 career batting average. It wasn’t his 339 career homers.

None of that hurt, obviously. There are only three other right fielders in the live-ball era in the 2,700-Hit, .290 or Better, 300-Homer Club — Hank Aaron, Al Kaline and Mel Ott — and you can find out lots more about them the next time you’re in Cooperstown.

So Parker hung around long enough that he did have the counting numbers that should have gotten him into Cooperstown a long time ago. But those weren’t the numbers that finally got him elected Sunday — in his fourth appearance on one of these committee ballots.

Nope. He may have played nearly two decades in the big leagues. But don’t even bother looking at any of the 12 he played after 1979. You know why he’s bound for Cooperstown? Because of his first five full seasons — the seasons that created the legend of Dave Parker.

Behold his five-year peak (1975-79). You’ll see what the heck I’m talking about.

Slash line: .321/.377/.532/.909, 147 OPS+
Average season: 23 HR/98 RBIs/17 SB
Gold Gloves: 3
Batting titles: 2
MVP awards: 1
World Series rings: 1
WAR/season: 6.2

I could find only one comparable five-year run by any right fielder in history before that. And it was a fellow named Henry Aaron who produced that one. I don’t know about you, but that got my attention.

The young Dave Parker was also a man with a throwing arm so supersonic, the folks at NASA should have borrowed it. In 1977, he had a season with 26 outfield assists — yep, 26! Only one outfielder in the expansion era has topped that one — a Pirates right fielder from a previous era, Roberto Clemente. And he just beat it by one, with 27 assists, in 1961.

So how the heck could it have taken all these decades for that guy to get elected? That’s a question Parker himself asked Sunday night.

“My wife was super excited,” he told MLB Network after the results were announced. “She’s saying that she can’t believe that it’s taken this long. And I agree with her.”

Ha. I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time or space explaining why it did take that long. But suffice to say, the Dave Parker who played 11 more seasons after turning 30 was a polarizing figure and a very ordinary player.

His average wins above replacement in those 11 seasons computed to a little over half a win per season. He went from one of the best outfielders in baseball in his 20s to one of the worst (totaling minus-61 Fielding Runs Above Average from 1980-91, according to Baseball Reference).

Plus there was way too much off-the-field drama and controversy. And the voters had a tough time getting that out of their heads, too — until now.

So why did Parker finally get elected? Why did he and Allen get elected together for that matter? Because we’re seeing a massive shift in Hall of Fame voting these days, right before our eyes.

It’s not those good old magic counting numbers of yesteryear that fuel the candidacies of the 21st century anymore. It’s players with special peaks of greatness who are now resonating all the way to Cooperstown.

Think about it. Just since 2019, the writers have elected Edgar Martinez, Larry Walker, Scott Rolen, Joe Mauer and Todd Helton. I don’t see any 3,000-hit men on that list.

And the various Veterans Committees have started veering in that direction, too. They elected Ted Simmons in 2020. And two years ago, we saw vote totals surge for Don Mattingly and Dale Murphy, two more guys who put themselves in the Best Player in Baseball debate for five or six years but got penalized by previous electorates for being counting-number challenged.

So the election of Allen and Parker represent just the latest dramatic shift in how we think and how we vote. Remember that when we turn our attention to the latest Baseball Writers’ Association of America ballot next month — and you run across names like Félix Hernández and Dustin Pedroia on it.

The world is changing, friends — and it’s changing Cooperstown. It was a looonnnggg, wild ride from the good old 1970s back to their Hall of Fame future. But on a memorable Sunday evening, Dave Parker and the late, great Dick Allen got their invitations to the plaque gallery. And for the rest of baseball time, no one will care now how many years it took to get there.