The Three-Day Feast of Mr. Dick Allen

Today’s feast-day celebration is three, three, three feasts in one!

The Feast of Dick Allen is actually a three-day long celebration — this year, beginning on Wednesday, March 9 and continuing through sundown on Friday, March 11 — and marks the transition from the offseason and its attendant horrors to the optimism that mid-March brings, with its promise of spring and baseball and magic numbers in the mid-hundreds.

The feast is recognized (by those who can make it) in the form of a ritual pilgrimage to the desert — which, of course, explains the timing for Team FanGraphs’ descent upon Phoenix, Arizona (and accounts for the absence of a Feast Day post yesterday, when the author was in transit to same arid city).

Of those who’re unable to perform said pilgrimage, understanding is requested for the lack of content at the Amalgamated Blogs of Team FanGraphs.

Life: NotGraphs is committed to remembering the life of Dick Allen.

Spiritual Exercise: Use the three days of Dick Allen’s feast as an opportunity to shed the previous year of baseball and to prepare yourself — mentally, physically, mentally again — for the season ahead. Time permitting, learn how to juggle and smoke at the same time.

A Prayer for Dick Allen

Dick Allen!
For most of
your career
you were
misunderstood —
like me when
I’m trying
to place
an order
at the drive thru
and the guy
on the other end
can’t hear
because he
hates my being

or when I ask
if the tequila
is 100% agave
and it turns out
to be only, like,
95% agave
or something.

I read somewhere
for example
that the media
characterized you
as selfish,
even as you were
starting a charity
that helped
inner-city kids
get all the
cigarettes
they needed
that’s unfair.

For me,
Whatever the color
of your beanbag
or religion
of your domestic
employees,
everyone needs
to learn
cooperation —

like that one
episode of
Punky Brewster
where everyone
gets stuck in a
different
refrigerator
and then learns
cooperation.