In 1963, after dropping out of Hahnemann Medical School, I took a job with the Phillies as an in-game vendor. For several months, I walked up and down the right field steps for two or three hours at every home game, selling peanuts and popcorn. (I never was promoted to selling beer and hot dogs, where the real money was.)

One of the benefits of the job was that I got to see every Phillies home game in person without buying a ticket. My favorite Phillie at the time, not just because of his baseball talent but because of his integrity in standing up to racism, was future Baseball Hall of Fame legend Dick Allen, arguably the greatest everyday player in Phillies history. (Some would say Mike Schmidt.) I saw Allen, who had herculean strength, hit the longest home runs I have ever witnessed in person or even on TV, two of them measuring over 500 feet, according to press coverage at the time.

(According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the longest home run ever hit in a major league game was by Babe Ruth in 1921. He hit a homer to straightaway center field at Tiger Stadium that was measured at 575 feet, a feat never equaled in the 105 years since then.).

I was not aware of it then, but at that time Allen lived with his family on Wissahickon Avenue at the corner of Mt. Airy Avenue from 1963 to 1972. (By coincidence, my wife and I moved one block away from Allen in 1971 while his family was still there.) The Allen house in Mt. Airy was new at the time. The Allens lived exactly one block from Allens Lane. (Allens Lane was named for William Allen, the 26th mayor of Philadelphia.)

“I still remember the mounds of dirt in front and the neighbors names,” Allen’s son, Dick Jr., 61 (nicknamed Doobie), told the Local last week. “Five years after we moved to West Mt. Airy, Dad was traded to St. Louis, but we stayed in the house. After moving in, someone threw a brick through the window. Trash and donuts were thrown in the front yard, and there were other incidents. I can remember Dad saying, ‘I don’t know who to trust anymore.’” (It was generally suspected at the time that the vandals were motivated by racial animosity, based on the hostility many Phillies fans showed to Allen.)

“In the Mt. Airy house, we were also robbed three times. One of those times, we were coming back from spring training, and Mom said, ‘Why are the curtains blowing?’ The robbers were just leaving. It was dark out. They even broke my sister’s piggy bank. When they saw us, they dropped the TV set and took off. So we moved to Bucks County in 1972 and soon afterwards were robbed there also.” (In recent years, there have been several highly publicized robberies of high-profile professional athletes.)

In the past few years, Allen Jr. has been part of a documentary film team led by executive producer Sharon Pannozzo that has created a five-part series, “My Father, Dick Allen,” which they have shown at screening events across the country, hoping to score a sale, possibly to one of the major streaming services. The series is chockablock with interviews with family members, former coaches and teammates.

Allen, who died in 2020 at age 78, missed being voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame by one vote in both 2014 and 2019. In the summer of 2025, he got into the Hall of Fame posthumously, garnering 13 of 16 votes from the Classic Baseball Era Committee.

According to Allen Jr., “Dr. David Fletcher, who was writing a book about Chicago in the 1970s, told me, ‘This could be a movie.’ We met in 2012 at a reunion for the 1972 White Sox (for which Allen played). We established a friendship. His idea was to have a documentary. Things my dad talked to me about would play a prominent part. We’ve been working on getting government grants. It’s a roller coaster. Since January of this year, I’ve been working on this full time. It started out as one 30-minute piece but took on legs and is now a five-part series.”

Allen was born in Wampum, Pa., 35 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, as one of nine children of Era and Coy Allen, a truck driver. After his parents divorced, he was mainly raised by his mother, who worked as a housekeeper to support her children.

Allen attended Wampum High School where, along with his brothers Hank and Ron, he was a star basketball player; all three brothers earned All-State honors. In the 1958 and 1960 seasons, Dick captained the basketball team, leading them to the state championship and earning All-American honors. (Allen’s older brother Caesar Craine was also a star athlete in Wampum.)

Despite their prowess in basketball, the Allen brothers chose to prioritize baseball because at the time baseball paid better, and they wanted to buy their mother a new house. Hank became an outfielder for three teams in the American League while Ron briefly played first base for the 1972 St. Louis Cardinals. Dick was scouted by Phillies scout, Jack Ogden, who convinced the team to sign Allen in 1960 for a $60,000 bonus.

“Ogden was there at my dad’s high school graduation,” Dick Jr. said. “He said to my dad, ‘Don’t waste your talent working in the steel mill (where many Wampum High School graduates worked). He immediately drove my dad to Elmira, N.Y., where the Phillies had a minor league team. My dad gave the entire bonus to my grandmom, and the IRS still made him pay the taxes on it. Dad then became the first Black player on the Phillies’ minor league team in Little Rock (Arkansas), so he was a part of Southern history. He had to endure constant racial slurs there.

“In early to mid-2000s, he and I went to Little Rock, although he really did not want to go. He said it would be like walking through a graveyard. He had me afraid of the South. Dr. Fletcher suggested that we go there. Ferguson Jenkins (a former major league pitching great) told me he had to endure the racial slurs, but only every fifth day when he pitched, but that my dad had to endure it every single day. He was in the eye of the storm every day.”

Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com.