The Dick Allen Experience

by
December 20, 2010

In keeping with Carson’s explorations of Dick Allen, there’s this:

What to say about this thing of wonder? The White Sox wore red! He’s juggling! He has the facial hair of a 19th-century railroad baron! And: He’s smoking in the dugout!

I once heard an interview with Paul Stanley in which he said something to the effect of, “For a while there in the 70s, every song was about sex or what you were going to do that night.”

That’s as succinct and penetrating of a comment about a generation as I’ve ever encountered. The Dick Allen SI cover is similarly illuminating. This photo couldn’t be of anyone else at any other time.

Viva la Crash.





 

Handsome Dayn Perry can be found making love to the reader at CBSSports.com's Eye on Baseball. He is available for all your Twitter needs.

2 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Grapost
10 years ago

That SI cover photo was a deliberate attempt to smear Allen. In the history of baseball has ANY magazine ever put a photo of a player smoking on the cover before or after the SI cover? NO!

Plenty of players have smoked, smoked in the dugout, smoked in the dugout during games with plenty of photographers around. Yet only once in baseball history has a photo of one them smoking appeared on the cover or anywhere in a any kind of magazine.

I was watching a game in the 1970’s when the TV camera was pointed at the Giants dugout and you could clearly see Bobby Bonds smoking at the end of the dugout.

So why did they do it to Dick Allen? It obvious is was done maliciously, to make him look bad.

-1
Christian
10 years ago
Reply to  Grapost

Grapost you are a moron. I am confident it was an honor for Dick Allen to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Also no one cared if you smoked in the 70’s. So if smoking wasn’t considered bad for you why would it be malicious?

0