A Career of What-Ifs : Rod Allen Has Been Knocking on the Door of the Major Leagues for 10 Years, but Nobody Lets Him in for Long

It’s April, 1983. Every player at the Seattle Mariners spring training camp, except Rod Allen, sends his luggage to the big city in preparation for the regular season.

Allen, a graduate of Santa Monica High and a 10-year veteran of minor league baseball, lugs his bags to Salt Lake City for the team’s final exhibition game. The next day he learns the Mariners want him. But 12 major-league at-bats later, he returns to the minor leagues.

Allen’s experience in Seattle, the first of two brief stays in the major leagues, reflects the disillusioning education he has received from professional baseball. His has been a career of what-ifs, of near misses, of being the last player cut from the major league roster after spring training.

He has shown he can hit .300 or above in class AAA but has learned that holds no guarantee. Allen remains committed to the game and confident of his major league hitting ability. But at 27 he understands what he didn’t at 18--major league baseball rewards only a precious few.

A decade into his career, Allen, although proud, is not one of the few.

When he arrived in Seattle four years ago Allen’s Mariners uniform hardly fit and his photo slot in the team program was filled by a player released a day earlier. A game-winning hit earned him a name on opening night, but he was soon forgotten.

“That was a bad feeling,” said Allen, now the cleanup hitter for the Buffalo Bisons, a Cleveland Indians AAA affiliate in the American Assn. “I made the team and they still wouldn’t let me play. I had a great spring and it seemed like the team didn’t even know who I was.”

But his bat talked in Salt Lake City. He hit .324 in two seasons with the Mariners AAA club and felt he deserved another chance with the big-league team. He never got it. So after six years in the minors he became a free agent looking for a team in need of a line-drive hitter.

“Some guys, for whatever reason, get stereotyped as AAA players,” said Steve Greenberg, Allen’s agent. “Rod has definitely been stereotyped. He’s proved he can hit over .300 in AAA, but he’s not great defensively, average probably. He’s a fringe player. Most teams would not be afraid to call him if they needed a right-handed bat, but unless you break out of the stereotype, it’s tough.”

In 1984 Allen broke out of his stereotype briefly.

He sent letters to several major league teams and the Detroit Tigers responded immediately, signing him to play for AAA Evansville and inviting him to major league spring training camp as a non-roster player. Detroit also told him he would be evaluated in major league exhibitions.

In minor league camp Allen hit well, so well that “one day I was called over to (major league camp) and I was on the lineup card. I was startled. I had never seen that, but they wanted to see me.”

Allen knocked home the game-winning RBI, and the next day the Tigers called again. Soon he recorded hits off Houston Astros ace Nolan Ryan and Kansas City Royals submariner Dan Quisenberry, and the Tigers noticed. Detroit manager Sparky Anderson told him to come every day in uniform and ready to play.

“Then the Tigers traded (outfielder) Glen Wilson and I started to realize I had a chance to make the team,” he said. “My buddies said I had a good chance, and with three days to go in spring I went into general manager Bill Lajoie’s office and he said, ‘Congratulations, you made the team.’

“That was the most thrilling point of my career. I knew I had the ability, and now I had a major league contract.”

“He was ecstatic,” remembered Allen’s mother, Nania, “and I was too. There was no feeling like it because I knew he wanted it so bad.”

Allen believed he could hit big-league pitching consistently. The Tigers offered a $40,000 contract and a shot as designated hitter against left-handed pitching.

In 15 games Allen batted .296, going 8 for 27 with 6 runs scored and 3 RBIs. But that was not good enough on a team that won 39 of its first 51 games. As spring progressed, manager Anderson lost confidence in Allen, and on June 5 he was optioned to Evansville and replaced by Ruppert Jones.

“Rod was a very nice, cooperative person,” said Lajoie, Tigers general manager. “He was useful until we found someone more useful.”

Allen was a utility outfielder whose only asset was his bat. He had speed, but the Tigers wanted more. He learned he was expendable and left, angry, for Evansville.

“I was really bitter. The Tigers started out so well that year and I had to go to AAA where the team was in last place. It was like going from A to Z.”

In 74 games at Evansville, Allen hit .282, only to find his parent club in the World Series. He thought he should have been a part of Detroit’s first championship since 1968.

“That was devastating for him and for me, too,” his mother said. “He came home and didn’t watch the series. He wasn’t interested. I was kind of surprised, but it was painful for him.”

If Allen had known in high school that he would play 10 years in the minors he may never have accepted the Chicago White Sox $1,500 signing bonus. His parents wanted him to go to Arizona State and knew he would lose the benefits of a college education by playing baseball.

But Allen had always loved sports and wanted to continue the success he had known at Santa Monica High School, where he lettered in football and baseball. His 1975 American Legion team won the national championship, and he believed pro baseball would offer similar returns.

At 18 Allen had been dreaming about the major leagues for a decade. When the White Sox took him in the sixth round of the amateur draft, he smelled stardom.

In his first year Allen hit .307 with Sarasota of the Gulf Coast rookie league. In class A the next year, his average dropped to .243 over 100 games, but the White Sox moved him to AA in 1979 where he batted .267 in 86 games. On loan to Glen Falls, then a Chicago Cubs AAA affiliate, during the first half of 1980, Allen sizzled at .355 in 31 games and in 38 games at AAA Iowa hit .260. In 1981, after a full season at AAA Edmonton in which he batted .294 in 109 games, the White Sox traded Allen, catcher Jim Essian and shortstop Todd Cruz to Seattle for hot-hitting (.326) Tom Paciorek.

The trade made Allen happy because a year earlier the White Sox had chosen to improve their major-league club by purchasing free-agent contracts instead of developing minor league talent. When bullish right-handed hitter Greg Luzinski arrived from free agency, Allen knew he would have to wait, or be traded, to get his chance in the majors.

“We were trying to win at the major league level by acquiring free agents,” said Dave Dombrowski, who was involved with White Sox player development when Allen was traded. “When you do that, there are ramifications for guys like Rod Allen. All of a sudden the opportunity may not be there.”

Dombrowski, currently Montreal Expos director of player development, believed Allen was a good draft choice because Chicago obtained a productive player in Paciorek.

“The key factor is use,” he said. “It depends on how good the draft choice is, but if a team can acquire help in the trade, it means it was a good draft choice and it means that somebody else is interested in that player.”

Dan Evans, White Sox player personnel administrator, agrees. “Anytime a guy can finish off a trade,” he said, “he turned out to be a good draft choice.”

But Allen believed he was worth more than a player to be named later. His initial experiences in Detroit whet his appetite, and he figured somebody else would be carrying his luggage from then on.

Soon, though, the taste in his mouth was sour. When the Tigers sent him to Evansville they expected him to attack his job. He hit .282 in 74 games, and the Tigers sold his contract to Rochester, a Baltimore Orioles AAA affiliate, in the spring of 1985. A disgruntled Allen posted the worst numbers of his career and the Orioles released him.

That winter Allen toiled briefly in a Mexican league before calling Jeff Scott, Cleveland Indians director of player development and scouting, whom Allen had known at Seattle when Scott was in the Mariners front office. Allen asked Scott for a job. Aware of what Allen had done in the Seattle organization, Scott asked Allen if he was willing to get in shape and go to AA to help out. Allen agreed and soon moved up to AAA.

This spring the Indians invited him to major league spring training but assigned him to AAA Buffalo.

“They told me if they needed me, they won’t hesitate to call,” said Allen. “It was the same old song and dance.”

Scott said most AAA players retain an ability to help major league clubs until they reach their early 30s, leaving Allen perhaps seven more years in baseball. The problem is that the Indians are long on outfielders. Joe Carter, Carmen Castillo and Cory Snyder, all right-handed hitters, occupy spots on the major league roster. Add three other left-handed hitting outfielders and Allen will have to do more than hit to make it.

“Unfortunately for Rod, we’ve got six outfielders ahead of him,” said Dan O’Brien, Indians senior vice president. “The most important thing for him to do is produce. If you produce, there is always a place. He’s looking for an opportunity, and if we’re looking for a role player the two could fit together.

“The thing is that he’s not going to beat out the guys we have now, but he understands that. Rod isn’t an old man and if baseball expands he might get a chance. Or if somebody goes down, there could be a chance where we’d bring him up.”

“Rod has an opportunity to make it as a right-handed designated hitter/pinch hitter,” added Scott. “He would probably be a guy who would play a role coming off the bench. If he’s gonna get (to Cleveland), he’s gonna do it by swinging the bat.”

The Indians’ confidence in Allen as an AAA player remains high. His confidence has waned little since he entered professional baseball. But the question remains whether Allen will ever become a major leaguer.

Despite retaining little interest in Allen, Lajoie is optimistic about his chances.

“Rod’s a decent hitter,” he said. “At 27 he can contribute and should a team like Cleveland need him, I wouldn’t see them having a problem with bringing him up, but I don’t think he’ll ever be a regular.”

Tom Spencer, another 10-year minor league veteran who roomed with Allen in 1979 at Knoxville, the White Sox AA affiliate, feels it’s not too late for Allen to reach the majors. Spencer, manager of the class A Geneva Cubs, tasted the good life briefly in 1978 when the White Sox called him up, but the next year he was back in AA. Spencer says he never turned bitter.

“It wasn’t difficult for me to keep the dream alive because there was nothing I’d rather be doing,” he said. “I could have got frustrated, could have moped, but I didn’t.

“So many things can happen that Rod might get the opportunity to play. Physically he can continue. He takes good care of himself, and although it’s not the norm for a guy to play 10 years in the minors, he’s a fella that has the capability to hold on and make it.”

Spencer doesn’t think Allen can start for an upper-echelon major league club but said a less successful team like Cleveland might use him because he has experience.

Bisons manager Steve Swisher, who has Allen working at first base and in the outfield, lets Allen’s bat do his talking. “He’s a tremendous looking hitter,” said Swisher. “He makes consistent contact and drives in runs. That’s why he’s in the four hole. He’s done whatever I asked and done a great job.”

The irony is that Allen, a .300 hitter with 9 home runs, 52 RBIs and 5 game-winning hits at Buffalo as of Monday, has left an encouraging impression wherever he’s gone and still can’t find a major league job.

“Rod knows he’s right on the brink (of reaching the majors),” said Greenberg, Allen’s agent, “but it’s a Catch-22. If you don’t have any major league experience, they won’t call, and the only way to get experience is to be called.”

If he is not called to the majors soon, Allen is considering playing baseball in Japan, where he believes he could obtain a six-figure salary. He remains devoted to playing and perhaps teaching or coaching when he can no longer play.

“I’ve come to the conclusion that baseball is what I want to do,” he said. “Sometimes the dream dies, so you have to search inside yourself. But I’m never gonna’ quit the game.”