Friend's decade-long campaign for Dick Allen ends at Cooperstown

Mark "Frog" Carfagno walked out of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum on Saturday afternoon, less than a day before Dick Allen's induction. It was his first visit to Cooperstown, N.Y. For more than a decade, getting Allen enshrined had been his mission.

Carfagno, who will soon turn 72, almost did not come. A severe anxiety disorder had left him close to crippled, and a bladder infection added to his troubles. For weeks he doubted he could make the drive of more than four hours. His sisters, Sharon and Angela, would not let him stay home. They reserved a hotel room in January, put him in the car Friday morning and told him they would not listen to him complain about missing it. "I couldn't miss it," he said.

In 2014 he began a relentless campaign to get Allen into the Hall, which he saw as a way to repay a debt he felt he owed. Many Phillies fans in the 1960s regarded Allen as sullen and selfish, a malcontent who caused trouble in the clubhouse. Carfagno, who grew up in Southwest Philadelphia, saw a great player who was mistreated by fans and who deserved more appreciation.

Their bond formed in the mid-1970s, when Carfagno was a teenage groundskeeper for the Phillies. Allen learned that Carfagno's father had died when he was young and told him, "If you need anything, I'm here." Allen gave him money for a trip to the Shore with friends. Later, when Allen was an instructor in the Phillies organization, the two shared a hotel room during spring training. Allen told him that when he played in the minors in Little Rock during segregation, he could not eat in restaurants with his teammates. They brought food back to the hotel for him, and he learned to keep it warm or reheat it, a habit he never dropped.

After Carfagno lost his job with the Phillies, Allen drove to his house and picked him up. They spent a couple of days together, playing oldies and singing doo-wop songs from the open back of Allen's truck in a Cherry Hill parking lot until 4 a.m. Angela said her brother's love for Allen, like that for a father, "forced him to do this campaign."

Allen refused to lobby for himself, apparently too proud to ask for forgiveness. "I feel for the family," Carfagno said. "They wanted it more than he did. He said he didn't care, but I think he would have liked to be in."

In 2014, Carfagno and Allen's son, Richard, started a speaking series at city schools. They talked with students about Allen and about Philadelphia in the 1960s. After their first stop, at Archbishop Ryan, an administrator told Carfagno that students had traded Dick Allen stories that night with their parents and grandparents. The campaign also included two City Hall press conferences with Mayors Michael Nutter and Jim Kenney and Gov. Tom Wolf. Carfagno sent countless emails, calls and letters to Hall of Famers, writers, broadcasters and others in the sport.

Standing on Main Street in a red Phillies cap, Carfagno looked thinner than before, having lost weight and hair over the years. His sisters said they have worried about him and hope his health improves in the coming months. The wait for the vote to turn in Allen's favor, and the fear that his work would come to nothing, had worsened his anxiety and made him ill.

Asked what he would do now that the work was done, he smiled slightly. "The next guy," he said, "is Gene Mauch." He appeared to be joking.