Frank Thomas and the fight with Dick Allen

Frank Thomas hit 286 home runs in his major league career, but it was the swing that struck a teammate for which he’s best remembered, if infamously so, in at least one of the seven cities he played in. Thomas, who died last month at age 93, has the same name as a more accomplished player, if little else in common. This Frank Thomas hit 235 fewer homers than that Frank Thomas, who played a couple of generations later. Together they combined for 807 home runs, the most of any single name in the Hall of Fame. When the younger Frank Thomas was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014, the older was invited, according to his New York Times obit, and signed photos. Thomas, who by the time of his retirement had played for seven of the 10 National League teams, represented the Pirates, for whom he played the longest and hit the majority (163) of his home runs. Thomas from the Times obit: “My name is always going to be in the Hall of Fame.” He spent far less time in Philadelphia — little more than 11 months — but it was far more eventful. It’s a thin line between glory and villainy, and Thomas was on both sides of it in the 74 games he played for the Phillies. They were in first place, a game-and-a-half ahead of the Giants, when they dealt for Thomas on August 7, 1964. He doubled in a run in his first at-bat with the Phillies and knocked in two runs in the game. The Phillies won. He knocked in a run in his next game and the Phillies won again, knocked in two more in his next game and the Phillies won that, too. It didn’t hurt that they were playing the Mets, Thomas’ old team. He knocked in eight runs in his first 18 at-bats for the Phillies, and in a week their lead was four games. In two weeks, it was seven-and-a-half, and Thomas received deserved credit. He homered seven times and knocked in 26 runs in 33 games, and he was the final piece in an underdog ’64 Phillies season. And just as they reached the crescendo, Thomas and the Phillies screeched, the victim of the kind of karmic blow that only the ’64 Phillies could suffer. He broke his thumb in a game on September 8 that wouldn’t have been played had the Phillies not tried to treat the schedule as if it were a tax write-off to be abused. The game against the Dodgers was a makeup of a postponement from more than a month earlier, called not because of the weather but because the forecast was nine innings of Sandy Koufax. Just as the Phillies might have nefariously planned, Koufax wasn’t available to pitch the makeup, his season ended by injury. Unfortunately, the Phillies still lost the game and much more. Though Thomas returned in the midst of the 10-game losing streak, it was futile. He went 2-for-14 without an extra-base hit in six games. (Not only did the Phillies lose Thomas and the game, they also lost a potential day off. Because of another makeup on September 10, the ’64 Phillies played every day in September and twice on the 7th. Playing 31 games in 30 days didn’t help a beleaguered team with its best pitchers starting on two days rest.) It wasn’t Thomas’ fault the ’64 Phillies lost the pennant, but you couldn’t tell by their offseason. They traded for home-run-hitting, strikeout-swinging, ground-ball-booting first baseman Dick Stuart in the offseason. Thomas, who had been a starter for 12 seasons, wasn’t anymore. That probably didn’t help his mood leading up to the main event of his Phillies tenure. Thomas had just 82 plate appearances in not quite half a season and he was taking batting practice on July 3, 1965 with the irregulars, a demeaning status for someone used to being on top of the hierarchy. The details of his fight are well-chronicled, though accounts vary. Johnny Callison and Allen teased Thomas, who had struck out in his only at-bat the previous night. Thomas was well acquainted with the custom of needling, if one-dimensionally so. “A lot of guys in baseball could give the needle, but Thomas never knew when to quit,” said Richie Ashburn, a Phillies broadcaster and former teammate of Thomas with the Cubs and Mets, in Tim Whitaker and Allen’s book Crash: The Life and Times of Dick Allen. “He wasn’t an evil guy. His timing was just always off.” Allen said Callison taunted Thomas (he liked to call him Lurch); Thomas, according to Mitchell Nathanson’s God Almighty Hisself: The Life and Legacy of Dick Allen, claimed it was Allen, and that he responded to him. “What are you trying to be, another Muhammad Clay, always running your mouth off?” (In Nathanson’s book, Philadelphia Daily News sports writer Bill Conlin said Thomas said Black Mohammedan Son of a Bitch, and Allen’s mother told the Pittsburgh Courier Thomas called her son a black bastard. Twice.) Whatever Thomas said, when it was Allen’s turn to hit he opted to hit Thomas. Allen from Crash: “… he knew it was coming. I went over, right in his face. I said, ‘Frank, I told you, that stuff don’t go with me.’ Then I popped him, a short left to the jaw. He went down, then he got up swinging that bat.” Thomas hit Allen in the shoulder, teammates separated them, Thomas apologized in the locker room and Allen ignored it. Allen from Nathanson’s book: “… to tell you the truth I was hurting so I had to restrain myself to keep from going after him again.” The game went on; Allen tripled, Thomas hit a pinch-homer but the Phillies lost. And then the Phillies released Thomas, hushed Allen and the reverberations of Thomas’ swing soiled the franchise for years. Thomas from Crash: “Certain guys can dish it out, but can’t take it.” Like fielding, self-awareness wasn’t Thomas’ thing. In the aftermath, Thomas went on a public relations offensive to salvage his reputation. The Phillies told Allen to speak not at all, and he mostly complied. Thomas, still popular with fans, appeared the aggrieved party. He was out of work and Allen had refused his apology, according to Nathanson’s book, “because,” he said, “I was still mad.” Phillies fans, who had booed Allen because of his NL-worst 138 strikeouts and 41 errors during one of the best rookie seasons ever in 1964 (.318, 29 homers, 125 runs scored, 91 RBIs, .557 slugging percentage), now had another reason to demonstrate their vitriol. Just as if they were throwing snowballs at Santa a few years later — which ESPN never fails to mention — they didn’t abstain, and they didn’t miss. Allen played four more seasons after 1965 in Philly, and the relationship never improved. Underneath it all, which Nathanson suggests the white press corps missed (the Black newspaper the Philadelphia Tribune did not), was an ugly current of racism. Allen was the city’s first Black baseball star, playing in a stadium in a Black neighborhood at a time of increasing Black political empowerment. The hostility toward Allen was, in large part, a dose of white backlash. Nathanson’s book said that according to a 1965 story by Daily News sportswriter Larry Merchant, “Thomas’ ‘Muhammad Clay’ reference ‘had no racial connotation whatsoever.'” The manager Gene Mauch had said so, and Allen wasn’t allowed to contradict him. Allen from Crash: “There was one thing that Frank Thomas used to do that I could never get out of my mind. He would pretend to offer his hand in a soul shake to a younger player on the team, but when the player would offer his hand in return, Thomas would grab the player’s thumb and bend it back hard. To Thomas, this was a big joke. But I saw too many brothers on the team with swollen thumbs to get any laughs.” Thomas wasn’t nicknamed the Big Donkey for his politics. In the years after, according to Nathanson’s book, Allen said the two reconciled and even exchanged Christmas cards. That spirit wasn’t evident for quite a few years. Over time, understanding of the fight underwent a revision, too. The older generation which had blamed Allen has long since mostly passed; the younger generation which is now the age the older generation was then, revered Allen. “Everyone wanted to be Dick Allen,” said Phillies owner John Middleton in 2020 of kids in the 1960s. Those kids weren’t the fans booing Allen. If Thomas was beloved, it was as a member of the ’62 Mets, for whom he hit 34 homers. Perhaps it says something about Thomas that he was a fan favorite on a team which lost 120 games. Perhaps it says more about the ’62 Mets. (Thomas had his best years for the 1950s Pirates, who finished last or next to last in most of them. The best thing he did for them was leave, though that’s not a reflection on Thomas. But after leading the Pirates to a surprising second-place finish in 1958, Thomas was traded to the Reds for Smokey Burgess, Harvey Haddix and Don Hoak — all key parts of their 1960 World Series champions.) Thomas hit multiple home runs in three straight games for the ’62 Mets, who being the ’62 Mets, lost them all. Thomas wore on his manager, Casey Stengel, though, not according to his New York Times obit, for his abrasiveness but for his propensity to hit into double plays. Thomas, according to the Times, tried to pull everything in an attempt to hit an advertising sign by the left-field foul pole and win a free boat. Which led, after another double play, to Stengel yelling from the dugout, “Ya wanna be a sailor, join the Navy!” Thomas was the left fielder, in the famous Yo la tengo story, who collided with Richie Ashburn, who had learned to say I got it in Spanish to call off Venezuelan shortstop Elio Chacon on pop flys. Unfortunately, Thomas wasn’t bilingual, which might explain Ashburn’s less-than glowing endorsement above. All those anecdotes on the ’62 Mets are in the Times obit. Perhaps it’s a measure of our parochialism that his fight with Dick Allen, which defined his career to Phillies fans, isn’t. Career stats: .266 average, 286 home runs, 962 RBIs, 1,671 hits, 262 doubles, 792 runs, .320 on-base percentage, .454 slugging percentage, .774 OPS, 107 OPS+, received MVP votes five times, with a high of fourth in 1958 (.281/334/528, 109 RBIs), three-time All-Star, 18.7 WAR (1.2 for ’64 Phillies in 39 games).