Dick Allen and the 1967 All-Star Game

In the summer of 1967, during the break between my sophomore and junior years of college, I was sharing a basement apartment on New Hampshire Ave. in Washington, DC, with my good buddy from high school, Bruce Ingraham. The apartment wasn’t much, but it had the distinct advantage of being a half block from Dupont Circle, the very heart of the youth culture of 1960s Washington, often called the Greenwich Village of DC. At any time of the day or night on the Circle you could hear folk music, jazz, bluegrass, or Caribbean and African rhythms, or listen to a group of people protesting the Vietnam War or debating civil rights issues, or the latest William Burroughs novel. You could get a good high by just breathing in the “grass” fumes as you walked across the circle.

DC also had the advantage of having a drinking age of 19. As a just-turned 20-year-old, this was my first experience of being able to walk into a bar, any bar, and ordering a beer. I can honestly say that this boy from more restrictive Pennsylvania took full advantage of this unique opportunity.

I had not seen much baseball that summer. Our apartment did not have a television and Bruce was not a baseball fan, but I was determined to take in the 1967 All-Star Game, which was to be played on July 11 in the brand new Anaheim Stadium, home of the Angels in Anaheim, California. I hadn’t missed an All-Star Game in at least 10 years, and I wasn’t going to miss this one, with my Phillies hero, Dick Allen, in the starting lineup.

I decided to take in the game at my new favorite watering hole, the Ben Bow Inn on Connecticut Avenue. The Ben Bow was a dimly lit, narrow joint that resembled, as one might expect of a place named after a tavern in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, a ship’s galley. It hosted an eclectic mix of patrons ranging from beat poets to rednecks, students to businessmen, gay liberationists to motorcycle gang members. Most importantly, at the moment, it had a television tuned to the All-Star game and Michelob Dark beer on tap.

I was about halfway through my first Michelob, when Allen, batting fifth in the order, stepped to the plate to lead off the top of the second inning. There was no score in the game. The pitcher was the Minnesota Twins' ace Dean Chance, getting a chance to start the All-Star game in the town where he had been a star pitcher for the Angels for many years. Allen worked the count to 1-1 and then smashed a low and away breaking ball to deep center field. Tony Oliva, playing centerfield, raced back and then gave up as the ball disappeared over the fence. The announcer was gob smacked that Allen could hit that pitch that far. You can see it all happen here.

https://youtu.be/0jo64akEI9U

I let out a loud "WHOOP," as the ball cleared the fence, which brought the disapproving eyes of several patrons down on me. Washington was in those days an American League town, the home of the recently reconstituted Washington Senators, and the former home, until 1961, of what was now Chance's and Oliva's team, the Twins. Anyway, I calmed down and smiled into my beer. 

Allen's solo home run stood up until the bottom of the sixth, when Orioles' immortal Brooks Robinson took the Cubs' (and former Phillie) Ferguson Jenkins deep . The score remained tied at 1-1 as the night rolled on. Allen had three more at bats and struck out all three times. Phillies lefthander, Chris Short, entered the game in the ninth inning, and to my great pleasure, pitched very well, shutting the American Leaguers down on one hit and one walk. In the tenth, with the winning run on second base, Short struck out Angels shortstop Jim Fregosi. 

By the twelfth inning I was well into my fourth beer and counting my change to see if I could afford another. Thankfully, the National League finally broke through when the Cincinnati Reds' Tony Perez connected against the Kansas City A's' Catfish Hunter. The New York Mets' Tom Seaver came on in the bottom of the twelfth and worked around a one out walk to the Boston Red Sox' Carl Yastrzemski, to lock down the National League victory.

I drained my beer, left my last quarter on the bar,  and walked happily, and a bit unsteadily, out into the late night.

The 15-inning game was the longest game by innings since All-Star games began in 1933. That record was tied in 2008 when the game at Yankee Stadium also went for 15 innings with the American League prevailing 4-3. Both the 1966 and 1967 All-Star games finished with a 2-1 score and both went into extra innings. The lowest scoring All-Star game ever played happened one year later in 1968. That game ended 1-0, with Willie Mays scoring on a groundout in the first inning for the only run of the game.