The Baseball Hall of Fame welcomed two dominant sluggers to its gallery on Sunday, with Dick Allen and Dave Parker gaining election through the Classic Baseball Era Committee.
Allen, who died of cancer at 78 years old in 2020, was elected by the committee, which considered eight candidates whose careers peaked before 1980. After missing election by one vote in both 2015 and 2022, Allen collected 13 of 16 votes for 81.3 percent.
Parker, who is 73 and has been fighting Parkinson’s disease, received 14 of 16 votes for 87.5 percent.
No other candidates cleared the 75 percent threshold needed for election. The closest was Tommy John, who got seven of 16 votes (43.8 percent). Ken Boyer, John Donaldson, Steve Garvey, Vic Harris and Luis Tiant each received fewer than five votes.
Allen was the 1964 National League Rookie of the Year for the Philadelphia Phillies and the 1972 American League Most Valuable Player for the Chicago White Sox. Mainly a corner infielder, he hit .299 with a .386 on-base percentage and a .554 slugging percentage in an 11-year prime from 1964 through 1974.
During that stretch, there were 23 Hall of Famers (before Sunday) who had 4,000 plate appearances. Allen had a better OPS than all but Henry Aaron, who was one point better: .941 for Aaron, .940 for Allen. And Allen ranked first in OPS+, at 165.
Yet prior to the 2015 vote, Allen had been an afterthought as a candidate; in 14 tries on the writers’ ballot and four on other iterations of the veterans’ committee, he had never reached 20 percent.
His career spanned 1963 to 1977, with five teams, and his totals of 351 homers and 1,848 hits did not inspire voters who struggled to understand why such a productive player changed teams so often. Allen, the first Black star for a Phillies franchise that was the NL’s last to integrate, had a perspective hardened by his minor-league experience in Little Rock, Ark. He was often cast as a rebel with little regard to his viewpoint or the context of his times.
He also never got a chance to play in the World Series, appearing in just three playoff games in 1976, for the Phillies. Their 1964 team infamously faded in late September, but that was hardly Allen’s fault; during the 10-game losing streak that sank their pennant hopes, he batted .415.
Parker had achieved almost everything else a player could hope to do. After winning two batting titles and the 1978 National League MVP award, he led the Pittsburgh Pirates to the top in 1979, when he was also MVP of the All-Star Game. He won three Gold Glove awards, captured the first Home Run Derby with the Cincinnati Reds in 1985, and added another World Series championship with the Oakland Athletics in 1989.
But Parker also struggled through four seasons (1980 to 1983) due to drug use and injuries, and while he played through age 40, reinventing himself as a respected elder statesman, those middle years had hindered his candidacy.
He peaked at 24.5 percent in 15 years on the writers’ ballot, and at 43.8 percent in his first three committee votes. This time, his body of work got its due.
Parker, who is part of the Pirates’ and Reds’ Halls of Fame, finished with an All-Star season for Milwaukee in 1990 and a 1991 finale split between the Angels and Toronto. He had 2,712 career hits, 339 home runs and a .290 average.
Only 15 hitters in history have that many hits and homers while also hitting .290. All are now in Cooperstown except those who recently retired (Miguel Cabrera and Albert Pujols) and those with strong ties to steroids (Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez).
The others are Henry Aaron, Lou Gehrig, Chipper Jones, Al Kaline, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, Mel Ott, Frank Robinson, Babe Ruth, Billy Williams — and, now, Dave Parker.
The results of the writers’ ballot will be revealed next month, with CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki and others joining a group of holdovers including Billy Wagner, Andruw Jones and Carlos Beltrán, who all received more than 50 percent last year. The induction ceremony will be July 27 in Cooperstown, N.Y.
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(Top image: Dave Parker: Focus on Sport / Getty Images; Dick Allen: Diamond Images / Getty Images)
