Lee Lowenfish

I was in the womb on December 7, 1941 so have no above-ground memories of that day in infamy.   But while preparing dinner on December 7, 2020 I learned on the internet that Dick Allen, the great slugger primarily for the Phillies and White Sox, had died at age 78. 

 
What a tough year it has been for losing baseball Hall of Famers.  Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, and Joe Morgan within days of each other.  Then significant contributors Jay Johnstone, Lou Johnson, Ron Perranoski gone similarly. And now Dick Allen.

 
Allen's career numbers and accomplishments suggest possible Hall of Fame status: 15 seasons, .292 BA, .534 slugging average, 351 HR, 1119 RBI, 1964 NL Rookie of the Year, 1972 AL MVP, 7 All-Star Games.

 

From 1964-1973 his numbers were up there with future Hall of Famers Hank Aaron, Harmon Killebrew, and Willie McCovey. 

 
But Allen was fated to come into the major leagues in early Sept. 1963 less than three months before the JFK assassination.  Playing in Philadelphia - sometimes called the northern-most southern city in the U. S. -  was no picnic for a sensitive Black man, one of nine children raised in Wampum, Pa. 40 miles north of Pittsburgh.  

 

Dubbed Richie by the Philadelphia press, Dick Allen didn't like the nickname - it reminded him of being a 10-year old, Richard Goldstein noted in his NY Times obit. Allen produced as a Phillie but he followed the beat of his own drummer. 

 
Love of horses was a family tradition.  Dick's father owned working horses, and Dick's brother Hank, a major leaguer for seven seasons, trained them. One of them, Northern Wolf, finished sixth in the 1989 Kentucky Derby, the first Black-trained horse to make the "Run for the Roses" in 78 years.  

 

The end of Dick Allen's time in Philly was precipitated by his missing a 1969 Mets-Phillies doubleheader - he went instead to Monmouth track race in New Jersey. 
By the end of the season, first baseman Allen responded to Philly fan heckling by scribbling with his feet the words "Boo" and "Oct 2", the day the season ended. 

 

He was traded to St. Louis in the Curt Flood deal - Flood of course didn't report and sued baseball instead.  After the 1970 season with Cardinalsi, he was traded to the Dodgers for one season. 

 

Starting in 1972 he played three solid seasons for an understanding manager Chuck Tanner who was from New Castle near Wampum in western Pennsylvania. The White Sox press guide started listing him as Dick Allen.

 
He was traded back to Philly in 1975 and welcomed as a hero by the younger generation.  Future Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt and other teammates lauded him then and again this week.

 

Schmidt called him a first-class guy who wouldn't be treated as "a second-class citizen." In a ceremony this September the Phillies retired Allen's #15.   

 
I never talked to Dick Allen but my most vivid memory as a fan was when he was with the White Sox and he came into Baltimore around 1974.  In those days you could come early for batting practice and I saw him belt some long home runs LEFTHANDED into the shrubbery beyond the right-center field fence at Memorial Stadium.   

 
I did meet his brother Hank Allen when he was scouting for the Astros.  As

gregarious as his brother was shy and wary, Hank has an ingratiating manner

and silver-white hair that reminds me of Buck O'Neil. 

 

In a May 2017 interview with Peter Schmuck of the Baltimore Sun, Hank Allen explained the similarities between horse training and baseball scouting:  "You have to find athletes and you have to find a good mind."

 

Which leads me to my QUOTES OF THE MONTH SO FAR:

 **Actress Candice "Murphy Brown" Bergen in an interview with Maureen Dowd that I saw online and was in the NY Times Sunday Style section on December 6th.  It deals with how to maneuver through celebrity and I think it applies as well to idolized athletes:   

 
"You're semi-glorified but you're also negated. You really have to make an effort to become someone more than what your presentation is."

 
**Retired future Hall of Fame right fielder Ichiro Suzuki will be coaching high school baseball in Japan. Michael Clair on mlb.com last week quoted Ichiro this way:  

"High school baseball is 'baseball'. . . . Major league baseball is a 'contest'. . . .It's mainly how far you can hit a baseball and that is hardly baseball."  

 

Finally, please remember Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) on Dec. 16, his 250th birthday. He once said, "Those who understand my music can know no unhappiness."  Not sure it is true, but his music is certainly consoling in this time of great sickness and uncertainty. 

 

WQXR-FM 105.9 and wqxr.org plan a lot of Beethoven programming beginning on Dec. 12 through Dec. 16.

 
And always remember:  Take it easy but take it.  

As we approach the year-end holidays, let's cross fingers that those who didn't practice social distancing and mask-wearing over the Thanksgiving holiday don't pay an awful price and infect others.

 
As for my Thanksgiving, I made my first trip to the North Fork of Long Island staying in Greenport, a scant 80 miles from the Big Apple. The onetime seaport town is on the upgrade with many tasty restaurants and stores while maintaining its cozy maritime flavor.

 
A first-ever trip to nearby historic Shelter Island was also memorable. After a short car ferry ride, with Maria smoothly at the wheel, we found ourselves riding on the undulating roads of that precious slice of land. Even passed a Shelter Island Country Club and golf course "open to the public".   

 

Meanwhile, the best news out of baseball came a week before Thanksgiving when Kim Ng was named the general manager of the Miami Marlins. 

 
Ng (pronounced Ang) will be the first woman to reach that exalted level in major league baseball, and she is probably the most qualified person ever to reach the top. 

 
After starring as a softball shortstop at Ridgewood High in New Jersey and the University of Chicago, she entered baseball as a White Sox intern and has risen rapidly in the ranks. She was a top assistant to Yankee GM Brian Cashman during their most recent dynasty in the late 1990s through 2001.  

 
Since early this century Ng has worked in top level MLB's executive positions while always being on the short list of GM candidates. She didn't let her failure to win other openings get her down. 

 

The oldest of five Ng girls, she brings a universally respected love of baseball in all its nuances. Kudos to Derek Jeter, Marlins president and part-owner who witnessed Ng's abilities first-hand while playing for the Yankees, for encouraging Bruce Sherman, the Marlins principal owner, to break the glass ceiling. 

 
In this time of great uncertainty, no one knows for sure when the Marlins and the 29 other MLB teams will start the 2021 season.  It seems unlikely that a full 162

game can be played which is fine by me. 

 
The season is far too long anyway.  So to steal from columnist Jimmy Cannon, here's my "Nobody Asked Me, But" list of changes I'd like to see in baseball's future.

 

**CHANGE 1:  A regular season of a maximum 154 games or even 144, 140, or fewer.  Baseball did very nicely with 154 games from 1903 to 1960 and every team playing every other in its league 22 times, 11 at home and 11 on road. 

 

Of course, with expansion from the 1960s through the late 1990s, we now have

30 teams and 6 divisions and additional wild cards. Commissioner Rob Manfred reportedly wants 14 teams to make the playoffs in the future.

 

If we continue to devalue the regular season, I say at least let's shorten it.  

 
**CHANGE 2 - I'm not a knee jerk advocate of "cancel culture," but I can see the value in adding a more deserving name to the MVP trophy than baseball's first commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.  Landis didn't create baseball segregation but he sure tacitly enforced it.   

 
Why not honor the late Frank Robinson who is still the only man to win the MVP in both leagues?  First with the Cincinnati Reds in 1961 and then the Baltimore Orioles in 1966.

 

He played the game hard and passionately. The first Black manager in MLB with the Cleveland Indians, he was a very creditable manager for other teams. 

 
As an Oriole fan, I still think F. Robby's Game 6 tagging up and scoring from third base on a very short fly ball to Vic Davalillo in center field to extend the 1971 World Series to a seventh game is one of the greatest hustle plays I've ever seen. 

 

**CHANGE 3  Instead of starting an extra-inning game with a runner on second base and no one out, the gimmick currently used, why not allow for ties in the standings?  Hockey has lived with it for generations.  Even pro football allows for it.  There are enough games in a baseball regular season that a tie won't seem

like a devastating loss.  

 
**CHANGE 4  Modify the DH rule so a National League pinch-hitter can be used for a pitcher one time in a game without the pitcher being forced out of the lineup. Sadly, I guess the designated hitter in the AL is with us for the indefinite future.  

 
I have never thought that the disparity in the rule between the leagues was a detriment.  Except that American League pitchers were at a great disadvantage when they had to hit and AL teams lost a presumably big DH bat when the rule was not in effect in World Series road games. 

 

These changes won't guarantee any immediate uptick in spectatorship and participation.  But the more the drama of the game of running and throwing and

outguessing hitters instead of overpowering them is emphasized, I think the better the chance there will be of a resurgence of interest. 

 

And now before I bid adieu, here's some December tips for films on Turner Classic Movie. You never know what gems pop up on TCM.

 

On Sun night Nov 29, I stumbled into "Running On Empty" (1988 dir. by Sidney Lumet) with the marvelous cast of Judd Hirsch, Christine Lahti, River Phoenix, and Martha Plimpton. The fictionalized film based on the actual travails of radical activists living life on the run after violent anti-imperialist activities in the late 1960s/early 1970s holds up very well.

 

So here's my recommendations for early December on TCM:  

 

Th Dec 3 8p "Baby Face" (1933) Barbara Stanywick rises to the top using her

feminine wiles and encouraged by a mentor who quotes Nietzsche! Left in the dust in small roles are John Wayne and Douglas Dumbrille. 

 

Sat Dec 5 starting at 330p if you are into marathon watching or recording, 

Billy Wilder's "The Apartment" with Lemmon, MacLaine, MacMurray;  "It Happened on Fifth Ave," a progressive fantasy from 1947 set during the housing storage; "The Maltese Falcon" this week's "Essential"; followed by the first "Thin Man" and Eddie Muller's Noir Alley choice, "Tomorrow Is Another Day" with Ruth Roman and Steve Cochran. 

 

Sun Dec 6 is a mini-marathon starting at 6p with "Christmas in Connecticut" with Stanwyck and Sidney Greenstreet, and then two films with Marilyn Monroe, "The Seven Year Itch" with Tom Ewell and "Gentleman Prefer Blondes" with Jane Russell.

 

Fri Dec 11 8p is a 2015 documentary "Marsha Hunt's Sweet Adversity" about the blacklisted actress who used her later career to foster good causes.  She has drawn effusive praise from Eddie Muller which is as good a recommendation one can get. 

 

That's all for now on baseball and film.  Always remember:  Take it easy but take it!