Letters in the Dirt

Me & you, we never booed Richie Allen
I never understood why people did
He hit a homer every time he stepped up to the plate
That’s what I remember as a kid
Richie in the field out there by first base
The target of some mighty foul words
With his shoes he’d scrawl between the pitched
«B-O-O» in great big letters in the dirt
Philly fans, they’ve been known to get nasty
When Joe must go, they’ll run him out of town
I saw Santa get hit by a snowball
And then get hit again when he was down
Me & you, we never booed Richie Allen
Even if he did sometimes strike out
I was too young to read the papers
To know what all that booing was about
That big collapse of ‘64 was ugly
They blew a lead of 6 and one-half games with 12 to play
Some might say their fans were justifiably angry
World Series tickets printed up in vain
Philly fans, they’ve been known to get nasty
When Joe must go, they’ll run him out of town
I saw Santa get hit by a snowball
And then get hit again when he was down
Going back to old Connie Mack Stadium
You teaching me the rules of the game
We root-root-rooted for the home team
Those other people should’ve been ashamed
This was before the days of the million dollar contracts
Before the days of the artificial grass
He stood a bit outside the lines which made him fair game for those times
Richie Allen never kissed a white man’s ass
Me & you, we never booed Richie Allen
No, we’d pound our mitts & we’d yell, «We want a hit»
How could they call a guy a bum after he’d just hit a home run?
That didn’t make any sense to a kid
Now I’ve since found out all these days later
Now I know a lot more than I did
And if back then you knew, Daddy, why all those other people booed…
Thanks for letting me have my heroes as a kid