Golden Era Hall of Fame Ballot announced

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by brewing

Allen is the only one worthy to me.

I have to agree. I like some of the other players. We profiled a couple of them on the watercooler sports board. But Allen is clearly deserving. His lifetime stats don't wow you because he didn't play as long as some of his contemporaries. However, between 1964 and 1975, the years Allen was a full time player in the Major Leagues, of the 88 players who amassed 4,000 at bats in those 12 seasons, Dick Allen had the second highest OPS of all of them. We touched on this, too.

OPS is an imperfect stat. It doesn't include defense, which was admittedly not his strong suit. It doesn't include base stealing. But it does gauge how adept a player is at getting on base, and hitting for power. And, as I stated before, if you can do both, you are a special player. And only Willie McCovey's .927 OPS was higher than Dick Allen's .924 OPS during that period of 12 years. That's higher than Hank Aaron, Willie Stargell, Roberto Clemente, Willie Mays, Harmon Killebrew, Carl Yastrzemski, Tony Oliva, Reggie Jackson, Al Kaline, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, Joe Morgan, etc etc.

During that span, Allen was 6th in home runs. He was 4th in RBI.



When you are the second best player in baseball at something over a 12 year span, and some of the greatest players in the history of the game are behind you, you should merit serious consideration. Allen was an offensive superstar.