September Swoon: Richie Allen, the '64 Phillies, and Racial Integration (review)

The Philadelphia Phillies were the best team in baseball for the first 150 games of the 1964 season. They headed into a home stand and the last 12 games of the season with a 6 1/2-game lead over challengers Cincinnati and St. Louis. The Phillies lost 10 straight contests, finishing 1 game behind the Cardinals, who went on to defeat the New York Yankees in the World Series. It was the greatest late-season collapse in Major League baseball history.

In September Swoon William C. Kashatus, an educator, journalist, and author of six previous books on baseball, narrates the 1964 collapse, which continues to haunt Phillies fans. Kashatus bases his account primarily on interviews he conducted with former Phillies players and executives, including Dick Allen, Ruben Amaro Sr., Jack Baldschun, Johnny Briggs, Johnny Callison, Tony Gonzalez, Dallas Green, Robin Roberts, and Robert R. M. "Ruly" Carpenter III. The research on the 1964 season is employed as a framework through which to analyze the progress of race relations in Philadelphia and its National League franchise.

The Phillies were, of course, the last National League team to integrate its roster. This troubling tale has been examined by Bruce Kuklick in To Every Thing a Season: Shibe Park and Urban Philadelphia and by Christopher Threston in The Integration of Baseball in Philadelphia. What Kashatus contributes to this discourse is a focus on the role played by Richie (who now prefers to be known as Dick) Allen. While Allen is often vilified by Phillies fans, Kashatus depicts the Phillies' first black star as a victim of racism and media manipulation.

With the legacy of manager Ben Chapman, the Phillies had a well-deserved reputation for racism, but Kashatus maintains that by the late 1950s, Phillies management under Robert Carpenter was determined to diversify the team in order to make the club more competitive. Thus the 1964 club included Latinos, such as Tony Taylor, Tony Gonzalez, and Ruben Amaro Sr., and African Americans Wes Covington, Johnny Briggs, and Allen.

The Phillies signed Allen in 1960 to a $70,000 bonus. By 1963 Allen had advanced to the Phillies triple A franchise in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he was the first black player to play integrated baseball in the city. He faced considerable racial prejudice and even death threats in Little Rock. Allen, who had grown up in a small, integrated Pennsylvania community, was simply unprepared for this level of hate, and Kashatus is critical of Phillies ownership for failing to better support their prospect.

Allen encountered some racism when he joined the Phillies in 1964, but the team's performance, plus Allen's Rookie of the Year campaign, negated most animosity. In fact, the players interviewed by Kashatus insisted that the 1964 squad experienced no racial squabbling and that the swoon was simply due to a combination of bad luck and some panic on the part of manager Gene Mauch, who overworked pitchers Chris Short and Jim Bunning.

Nevertheless the racial harmony on the Phillies was short-lived. On July 3, 1965, Allen was involved in an altercation with teammate Frank Thomas. The fight was allegedly the result of some racial taunting by Thomas, but Allen, following the advice of management, refused to comment on the situation. Philadelphia released the popular Thomas, who had played a pivotal role for the 1964 Phillies until a late-season injury. Allen was blamed for Thomas's departure, and Phillies fans turned on their black superstar. A racially integrated team that should have been a pennant contender throughout the 1960s was torn apart.

Kashatus credits some racist fans but primarily the Philadelphia press for the deterioration of Allen's situation in the City of Brotherly Love. Reporters such as Sandy Grady, Larry Merchant, and Bill Conlin embodied the "chipmunk" style of sports journalism, which focused on the private lives of athletes. Kashatus concludes that the "writers' constant emphasis upon racial division within the Phillies...