The Wampum Walloper
December 10, 2012 by Matt Nadel · 1 Comment
Hey baseball fans!
Today, I will be blogging about a certain ballplayer who was very good at the major league level. He made seven All-Star Games in his 15-year career from 1963-1977. Ladies and gentleman, Dick Allen .
Dick “Richie” Allen started his career with the Phillies. In 1964, technically his second year in the bigs, he won the Rookie of the Year Award for the NL. He continued to post excellent stats in his years in Philly. After a couple seasons after him winning RoY, he started to be known as the “Wampum Walloper”. He got this nickname because he was born in Wampum, Pennsylvania, and because of his power hitting that won over most of Phillies fans’ hearts. Most of them.
After a fight with teammate Frank Thomas that resulted in Thomas being released the day after the fight, many Phillies fans were very mad at Dick. During Phillies home games, he was greeted by showers of food, garbage and debris. He eventually started to wear his batting helmet in the field because of this and earned the nickname “Crash Helmet”, which was shortened to “Crash”.
After 1969, he was traded to the Cardinals. He made the All Star team that year and established himself as one of the great power hitters of his day. After going to the Dodgers in 1971, Allen went to the White Sox before the 1972 season. He proceeded to win the MVP Award in the AL, hitting 37 homers, 113 RBIs, and batted .308. He continued to post solid stats until he retired in 1977. His final career stats were as follows: 351 homers, 1,119 RBIs, a .292 batting average, 1,848 hits, and 894 walks.
Sadly, Allen is not in the Hall of Fame. However, had he played longer, his stats might have been Hall of Fame-worthy. Shout-out to one of my biggest fans, Bart Fraenkel, the former mayor of my town, for giving me the idea to blog about Dick. Thanks for reading!
Matt Nadel is a 13 year old baseball history kid blogger from Springfield, NJ who writes two baseball blogs under the name, Baseball with Matt. Matt started his original blog back in April 2012 when he saw that a lot of his friends didn’t know anything about baseball history and he thought that a blog would be a fun way to educate kids and adults about baseball history. After posting nearly 85 times, he was introduced to John Thorn, the official historian for MLB, and John liked Matt’s blog and arranged for Matt to have his own Pro Blog on MLB , making Matt the youngest Pro blogger on MLB.com. You can also follow Matt on Twitter @BaseballwMatt. Baseball with Matt is a member of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance.
In 1972, when he played for the white Sox I’d check the boxscore starting in may on my front porch before dinner. I was 14 and needed something to look forward to. That’s what checking the boxscore did for me. Dick would go 2-4 with a hr and a couple of rbis and it was thrilling. Then came the game he hit two inside-the-park homers against the Minnesota twins. Great memories of sitting on my front porch with the evening bulletin and checking the white Sox boxscore.