allentown...you got some of the details correct but allow me to tell as Paul Harvey used to say, "the rest of the story." I know you were, like me, a very young phan so it is understandable that you might have forgotten some of the events. I was equally young but was fortunate enough to adopt the Phillies as my team in August of 1963 [and boy were they hot, 56-35 to finish that campaign] so the '64 season was almost like a slow motion kaleidoscopic image for me, I literally remember almost every game of that season.
The 1964 Phillies started hot [10-2 to start the year], stayed hot, then hit a lull in July and early August [played under .500 for almost a month] but maintained their .5-1.5 game lead against the Giants ad the reason was really quite simple...they could not hit lefties and had a 12-20 record against southpaws. Teams literally would bring up lefties to start against the Phillies [ see Gordon Richardson and Frank Bork] and the Phillies just could not hit them. Mauch and GM John Quinn then did two things that for a month made the Phillies easily the BEST team in baseball...they called up hot hitting outfielder Alex Johnson and on Aug 7 traded for first baseman Frank Thomas from the Mets.
Thomas immediately became the cleanup hitter and with Allen and Callison became a very dangerous 2-3-4 part of the order. Johnson hit 5th against lefties and suddenly the Phillies were beating everyone, to the tune of a 14-4 spurt and finished August with a 19-10 month and a 5 game lead entering September.
One of the best baseball writers I ever read named Arnold Hano was assigned to write a story about the Phillies entering Sept called A Week with the Phillies, an outstanding article which I still have and probably can still be found if you are earnest enough to look online. Hano was covering 3 games against Houston, a key 3 game series against the Giants and finishing with a Labor Day DHer against the Dodgers. He talked at length about a] the way the Phillies would grind out victories, b] the race riots that engulfed the city that summer and c] the booing of Richie Allen.
I won't go into detail of all the games but in the first one Callison, Covington, Thomas and Allen all homered in a 4-3 win and very famous photo of the 4 of them together smiling is still around. Allen and Thomas were hitting like gangbusters and the Phils finished Hano's week at 5-3 and 6.5 ahead.
Hano left on Sept 8 and probably wishes he hadn't...Thomas broke his thumb on a dumb play and the Phils [21-11 with Thomas] lost the game and struggled offensively from then till the end of the season. Jim Bunning said if Thomas had not been hurt the Phils would have won by 10 games. Hano turned in his column but had to add a last paragraph AFTER the season..."We know how it turned out."
In the off season Phils traded for Dick Stuart and Allen started the '65 season even hotter, hitting almost .350 on July 3, 1965. The Phils were hot, winning 6 straight and Mauch mentioned that if Allen kept playing the way he was he might eventually become one of the 10-20 greatest hitters who EVER played the game. Before the game that night Thomas, not called the Big Donkey for nothing, was razing Allen and words turned to threats and threats turned to action. They began fighting on the field and Thomas hit Allen on the shoulder with a baseball bat. The fight ended quickly and ironically both Allen and Thomas had big games that night, Allen with 4 hits and two triples and Thomas with a game tying pinch homer. Phils lost in the 9th, 10-8 and all might have been forgotten but Phils made two big mistakes.
One, they told Allen NOT to say a word about it so he could not defend himself and two, they released Thomas, until then a very popular player due to his '64 exploits. Allen, who loved Mauch till then, never quite felt the same about him and the fans began booing him even more He nosedived the rest of the year and finished with only 20 HR and a .302 average.
Although Allen, with the coaxing of veteran Bill White, had a phenomenal 1966 season the joy that had always been part of his demeanor was now gone...he began calling baseball a business, grew mutton chop sideburns and started drinking heavily, probably because the booing bothered him WAY more than he ever let on.
He hurt his hand badly in 1967 pushing a car but rumors were that he actually got hurt in a bar fight and this was basically the end of his time in Philadelphia. Oh, he played in '68-69, never again at 3rd base because of his hand injury and although his homers were still prodigious, the team was lousy, his heart wasn't in it and Mauch got fired...word was Allen said it was him or me, though he denied it.
He was dealt to St. Louis for Tim McCarver, went to LA and then to the White Sox, where he performed brilliantly. He retired after being dealt to Atlanta in 1975 but was coaxed to return to baseball when Dave Cash, Larry Bowa and Schmidt went to his farm and said he could help the Phillies win a pennant. He eventually agreed and the Phils got him in June 1975. He was embraced by the city but sadly he was never the same hitter, though he did have a wonderful first two months in 1976 when the Phils were playing .700 baseball. In fact, Schmidt and Bowa both said it was Allen that turned them into great players.
He became a free agent after the '76 season, left the Phils for Oakland that winter but was never the same and was released that summer. It was all over for the mercurial Allen but time has healed many wounds, Philadelphia has apologized with regret for the raciest way they treated him and he is now an employee and mascot for the team.
In retrospect, had the Thomas incident been handled differently Richie Allen might well have set records with the Phillies that we would still be talking about today. There was no better hitter in baseball from 1964-July 3 1965 and many of the cheers he got at the end of his career were likely from phans who never saw him play early but had only heard of his Paul Bunyan like exploits and simply wanted to say a belated THANK YOU!
Retiring his number and a HOF election would complete what has been a very interesting and at times explosive jaunt around the Phillie bases for Richie Allen.
