Upon arriving to Chicago’s welcoming South Side,
Dick Allen had absolutely nothing to hide.
Looking at the past through his aviator glasses,
He surely experienced Philly fans as braying jackasses.
The City of Brotherly Love showered Dick with hate,
Even when he slammed majestic shots from home plate.
So, the brother began his first-base dirt scribbling,
A pointed response to the fans’ ugly spittle dribbling.
With a creative cleated toe,
In the infield he wrote “COKE.”
Then he hit a booming homer
Over the Coke sign . . . way over.
In the dirt, Dick kept on writing;
Maybe it was his way of fighting.
“STOP.” “WHY.” “GONE.” “BOO.”
He wanted to be gone by “OCT 2.”
Bowie Kuhn cried, “Stop!” from his imperial tower;
Like Charles Dickens, Dick Allen spoke truth to power.
The minimalist first-baseman-poet
Did not the commissioner’s line toe it.
To Kuhn’s hapless order, Dick responded with his big toe:
In the manicured dirt around first, he defiantly scratched, “NO.”
Philadelphia’s press kept calling him the boy-like “Richie,”
Even though as a grown man he insisted it really pinched him.
After stops in St. Louis and L.A.,
To Chicago, Mr. Allen found his way.
With Bill Veeck and Chuck Tanner’s less hostile White Sox,
MVP Dick Allen stepped out of racism’s confining black box.