(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — This week’s White Sox home opener marks the 50th anniversary of a season that changed Chicago baseball.
John Owens and David Fletcher are the authors of new book called Chili Dog MVP: Dick Allen, The 1972 White Sox and A Transforming Chicago.
The 1972 White Sox won 87 games and finished in second place. But it was enough to re-ignite interest in a team that had lost more than 100 games in 1970 — and came very close to moving to Milwaukee in the fall of 1969.
When the White Sox traded for slugging first baseman Dick Allen in December 1971, they didn't anticipate that he would be a catalyst for a baseball team that is still remembered half a century later.
"Dick would come up to the plate … it was Michael Jordan before Michael Jordan came to Chicago," Fletcher tells WBBM Newsradio.
Allen hit 37 home runs and won the American League MVP for 1972. He was a superstar unlike White Sox players who came before. Organist Nancy Faust used to play the theme to "Jesus Christ, Superstar" whenever Allen stepped up to the plate at Old Comiskey Park.
1972 was also the second year behind the mic for White Sox announcer Harry Caray, who replaced the longtime low-key White Sox announcer Bob Elson in 1971. Caray came to the White Sox from Oakland, where he had spent the 1970 season clashing with owner Charlie Finley.
Like Allen, who was a star in Philadelphia before a series of trades brought him to Chicago, Harry Caray played by his own rules.
"It was a group of real iconoclasts who helped really put the White Sox back on the map, led by Dick Allen," Owens said.
The 1972 White Sox season also took place in a Chicago that was undergoing rapid social change, from an emerging Black middle class to a generation of younger, independent-minded politicians.
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