SABR : SABR 35 - "Why don't you teach him a few things?" Dick Allen, Ron Santo and the Battle for Leadership of the 1974 Chicago White Sox. (Research Presentation)

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SABR 35 Info :: Schedule :: S35, Friday :: SABR 35 - "Why don't you teach him a few things?" Dick Allen, Ron Santo and the Battle for Leadership of the 1974 Chicago White Sox. (Research Presentation)

SABR 35 - "Why don't you teach him a few things?" Dick Allen, Ron Santo and the Battle for Leadership of the 1974 Chicago White Sox. (Research Presentation)

By The SABR Office

"Why don't you teach him a few things?" Dick Allen, Ron Santo and the Battle for Leadership of the 1974 Chicago White Sox.
Anthony Giacalone
King I

On Opening Day 1974 a nearly uncountable number of fights broke out in the Comiskey Park crowds, but for the Chicago White Sox the season's biggest fight was yet to come. The off-season trade that brought the veteran Ron Santo to the White Sox initiated a bitter, year-long battle between the newly-arrived Santo and the Sox established veteran, Dick Allen, for the leadership of the young Chicago squad. Given their personalities, Santo and Allen were predisposed to dislike each other, but their dramatically different methods of guidance exacerbated the tensions between the two. In one tumultuous June week the leadership fight spilled over into a physical clash between Santo and Allen. Riven by conflict, the Sox, once expected to contend for a pennant, limped home from the season with a .500 record. This paper shows a snapshot of a transition in baseball history. In the end, Allen's quiet method of leadership, not Santo's confrontational approach, was the way of the new age of the 1960s and 1970s. It was an age that celebrated the individual and increasingly believed that reassurance was more effective than a tirade.

ANTHONY GIACALONE is a Ph. D. candidate in U.S. History at Northern Illinois University completing a dissertation on New Deal Economic Policy. He has been a contributor to Baseball Think Factory.com for three years and has been working on a biography of Dick Allen. He attended his first baseball game at Comiskey Park in 1972; relief pitcher Dave Lemonds gave him a baseball and Dick Allen hit a double.

Created On: 2005-07-12