For Allen, Sunday’s posthumous selection is bittersweet. But for both him and the Cobra, late is better than never.
For all the tools we have to assess the careers of baseball’s all-time greats, the Hall of Fame selection process is always going to be subjective. That’s as it should be, because determining who becomes enshrined forever in Cooperstown is as much an art as a science.
I have very few qualms about the Hall’s Classic Baseball Era Committee selecting Dave Parker and Dick Allen on Sunday. I would have written the same thing had any of the eight candidates under consideration been picked. All of them played a key part in baseball history, and their stories will not cheapen the Plaque Gallery one iota.
Allen was long overdue for selection. He fell short by a single vote in both of his last two times on the ballot, the last of which was in 2021, a vote delayed by a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Allen died on Dec. 7, 2020. Thus, it’s more than a little bittersweet that Allen is finally getting his due.
There’s no one really to blame, but posthumous selections of overdue candidates have been a little too common over the last 10-15 years. Minnie Minoso, Marvin Miller, Buck O’Neil and Ron Santo are among those whom fans would have relished to see taking the stage at the Clark Sports Complex. Allen is another.
All, I would argue, were fairly clear Hall of Famers who had been championed far and wide long before they died. It’s hard to think of a way to improve this issue, but there is solace in knowing how much posthumous selections mean to the friends and families of those selected. Bittersweet? Absolutely. But the selections do not go uncelebrated.
Allen topped out at 18.9% on the BBWAA ballots during his original candidacy. In « The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract », James rated Allen as the second-most controversial player in baseball history behind Rogers Hornsby, who was reviled on the record by the owners he worked for, the teams he played against and even the players he managed as a player-manager.
