Lions’ Rick Allen Shone Under Midnight Sun

It was just another long day of baseball in Fairbanks, Alaska, for Rick Allen.

He started his morning--on June 21, 1988, the day of the summer solstice--by tutoring Alaskan youngsters in a Little League clinic, then headed to Fairbanks’ Growden Park for a little batting practice.

Then, at 11 p.m., Allen’s summer team, the Fairbanks Goldpanners, took the field against the Hawaii Island Movers for the Alaskan Summer League’s annual Midnight Sun Game before a crowd of 5,000 sun-loving Alaskans.

Hawaii’s Jeff Cirillo, a right-hander from USC, was baffling Fairbanks with a no-hitter when the sun dropped to its lowest point in the sky--slightly above the horizon. Then, at 1 in the morning, Allen broke up the no-hitter and tied the game with a towering three-run homer.

And the lights stayed off in Fairbanks.

“It was kind of shady out, but it was still nice,” said Allen, Loyola Marymount’s senior third baseman. “It was sort of like playing at dusk in the late innings.”

The Goldpanners won that game, 4-3, in the bottom of the ninth. Allen drove back at 2 a.m. to the room he was sharing with a family in Fairbanks--high in the Northern Hemisphere, where the sun rarely sets during the summer--and finally got some sleep behind windows darkened with squares of cardboard.

“We did what we could to make it dark,” he said.

Allen hit .315 with nine home runs during that sunny Alaskan summer--a nice tuneup for his final college season.

And the long hours in Alaska seem to have paid off. Going into this weekend’s four-game series with the University of San Diego, Allen is at or near the top of most of the charts of Loyola’s offensive statistics.

Allen’s .387 batting average is highest among the Lions’ regulars. He is leading Loyola in runs batted in (41) and is tied for the team lead in home runs (seven) with outfielder Travis Tarchione. And even though he doesn’t look fast, Allen is leading the team in stolen bases (14 in 18 tries).

And he’s impressing professional scouts with his down-in-the-dirt defense and shotgun arm at third base. Allen has never been drafted by a major league team (despite posting a .352 mark at Moorpark College as a sophomore), but that’s likely to change after this season.

“He’s as aggressive a player and as hard-nosed as anyone I’ve ever watched,” said first-year Loyola Coach Chris Smith. “Rick gets the most out of his abilities and works harder on his game than anyone I have on the team.”

Allen likes to get his uniform dirty. In a non-league game against Long Beach State in February, Allen made diving stops on three consecutive plays--and got up in time to gun down two of the runners. He’s made only three errors in 35 games at the hot corner.

“He has great makeup as a player,” Smith said. “As good as he is right now, he will continue to improve. In the field, he does a solid job at third base. We depend on him a great deal.”

Allen’s versatility could be his ticket to professional baseball. Last year, Allen was Loyola’s designated rover. He shuttled around between the outfield and first base and managed to hit .335 despite not having anywhere to hang his hat permanently. And he played well at third in five games when Donny Sparks, Loyola’s starter, went down to injury.

“The scouts I’ve talked to said I could go (into the professional draft) at third base as long as I can hit enough to stay at that position,” Allen said. “You’ve gotta swing the bat to stay in there at third.”

Allen hit only two home runs last year. He attributed his power surge this season to being more relaxed at the plate and relying on his natural bat speed.

“Last year I always wanted to kill the ball so much and I’d try to muscle it out,” Allen said. “That would slow my bat down. Now, I’m just trying to have a quick, short stroke.”

And, as a result, the line drives are jumping off Allen’s bat. On a team well stocked with alley-slashing hitters--Tarchione, Brian Turang, Miah Bradbury and Tim Williams among them--Allen is leading in slugging percentage (.653).

But despite the team’s great hitting, it’s been a roller-coaster season for the Lions (17-17 going into the weekend series with San Diego). Even Allen has had a couple of off days--like Tuesday, when he went 0 for 3 against Cirillo in Loyola’s 4-3 loss to USC.

But there haven’t been too many down spots for Allen since he found his home-run swing in Alaska.

From June 8 until the last week in August, the Allen and the hard-traveling Fairbanks Goldpanners made road stops in San Francisco, Honolulu, and Pullman, Wash.--as well as taking on two other Alaskan teams, the Kenai Peninsula Oilers and the Anchorage 49ers.

Along the way, Allen faced top-notch college pitching--and even got to go up against a couple of side-arming Japanese pitchers whom Hawaii added to its roster late in the season.

“It was a great experience,” Allen said. “I learned how to be ready to play every day, which is the closest thing to pro ball. But it was also kind of weird. In Alaska, you’d go out after a game and drive home at 1 in the morning, and it was just like midday.”

It was also like a job. The Goldpanners found temporary work in Alaska for the players--Allen coached the Little Leaguers--and they played games every day except Sunday.

“Some of the guys had to do field work or they were out mowing lawns in town or doing landscaping,” Allen said. “I guess I was one of the lucky ones.”