TicketsAs a Bearcat, Allen was a three-year letterman in football and a two-year letterman in baseball. On the gridiron he began his career at offensive guard. Lauded for his intelligence, he later called defensive signals as a linebacker, earning Second Team All-Missouri Valley Conference honors in 1965 after earning the conference's defensive player of the week award three times. On the baseball field he was a left-handed power hitter who alternated between first base and outfield.
After graduating from UC with a degree in accounting in 1967, Allen's post-collegiate career included a stint in Illinois with the Joliet Chargers––a farm team of the San Diego Chargers. He eventually put his education to use in the corporate world. He worked for Mobil Oil for 25 years and later taught at the University of Central Florida Kenneth G. Dixon School of Accounting. He earned his MBA from Marymount University in 1992 and his Ph.D from George Washington University in 2003. Allen's nephew, Desmond Allen, is in the process of creating an independent film on Darryl's life.
Allen's account of his childhood and college career is a cross-section of America during the Civil Rights movement and a snapshot of Cincinnati during one of its greatest sports eras. We spoke with Allen over the phone this month. Below are his memories of that period of his life and his barrier-breaking seasons as a baseball player at UC:
On growing up in Cincinnati:
"We lived in a segregated complex called the Laurel Homes in downtown Cincinnati. When I got to be about seven or eight, my mom moved us in with my grandmother on Dayton Street, which was maybe a hundred yards from Crosley Field. There was a school called Heberle School. We used to play stickball on the playground of the school. We used a broomstick and a small rubber ball to play. We would go to the schoolyard and play stickball all day. I was always a little ahead of myself because I played with my older brother and his friends all the time.
There was a place in Cincinnati, it might still be there, called the Findlay Street Neighborhood House. And they would take our all the players from the community––black players––and we would play under the auspices of this Findlay Street Neighborhood House. We would go out into the suburbs and play white teams. Because we played so much stickball, and we hit a little rubber ball with a broomstick, when we played the kids our age, we would be ahead like 30 to nothing because we would just beat the baseball all over the park. Not only that, sometimes we didn't have bats, so we'd have to borrow the other team's bats and their gloves. The other parents would swear up and down that we were just too old to be playing against their children. But the fact of the matter is, we just spent all day playing one sport or the other.
We got to where we would always beat these teams really bad. They decided to put us down into the black league, with teams over by Linn Street. We had to play each other and only the best team came out to play in the tournaments against the suburbs, like Western Hills and some of those teams. One of our community members was a guy named Jimmy Wynn, who later played with the Astros. I think they used to call him The Toy Cannon or something like that. But he was [later] one of the best pro baseball players, and he was part of our mix.
So one of our teams would come out and play the best team, usually Western Hills. They had a guy named Pete Rose, who was a little older than I am. And Pete Rose, whenever we used to play his team, we hated it. When I went to college, I still had a distaste for Pete Rose. I never wanted to think he was as good as Jimmy Wynn was. But my first year at UC he came to practice with us before the Reds went down to spring training, and as a more mature man, I have to acknowledge that Pete Rose was one hell of a baseball player, because if they beat us, it was something that he did."
On how he joined the baseball team at UC:
"I got a football scholarship to Cincinnati, and I took the football scholarship because baseball is one of those kinds of sports in college, unless you're at a big baseball school, where they give out partial scholarships. Maybe they might give somebody room, somebody board, somebody books. They don't really have full scholarships to give out. College baseball is basically a white sport. All the inner-city kids, if they're playing baseball and football, they can get a football scholarship or a basketball scholarship that pays for everything. But baseball scholarships, they kind of split them up. So unless you come from a family with money, your chances of playing college baseball are slim to none.
So I went and played football, and in my freshman year, I tore the cartilage in my left knee. That spring, I had a knee operation. I told Coach [Studley] I wanted to play baseball, and he said, 'No, you're on a football scholarship. Why would I let you play baseball?'
My sophomore year, I was playing third-string guard on offense. The two guards above me [on the depth chart] got hurt. Coach Studley said, 'We're going to start you next game.' So I'm thinking, 'Man, I'm getting ready to start on varsity as a sophomore.' Saturday morning rolls around and I'm thinking I'm getting ready to start. I've been running with the first team all week. Right before the game, Coach Studley came to me and said, 'You know, Darrell Cauley is feeling better, so we're going to start him, but you be ready.' So I was sitting on the bench and then right in the first quarter Cauley went down with his knee and Coach Studley said, 'Allen! Allen! Get your helmet on! Come up here!' So I jumped up and put my helmet on. And then he put his hand on my shoulder. He said, 'You know what? I think I'm gonna redshirt you, go sit down.' I let them know I wasn't happy. The next Monday they called me into the coach's office. And he said, 'Well, coach wants to get an extra year out of you.' I said, 'Well, I'm not gonna play. I'm gonna play baseball.' I was just bluffing. I had a football scholarship; it wasn't like I could just play on my own unless I wanted to pay [for tuition]. But Coach Studley agreed that if I would come back and play [another year], which would be my fifth year, he'd let me play baseball in the spring."
On his experiences traveling through the South with the baseball team:
"We took our southern trip and my mom didn't want me to go because she was raised in the South. She said, 'Why do you have to go on the baseball trip?' I said, 'I'm on the baseball team. It's a college team. What can happen?' We got on the bus, and I thought it was fun. We went down through the South and we stopped in Jacksonville, and we played the Reds Triple-A team. They had a catcher who turned out to be pretty good, a guy called Johnny Bench.
We played Jacksonville [University] a couple games, and the coach took us out to the beach. I had never seen the ocean before. We were getting ready to go in the water, and there was a couple black guys that were standing at the beach and they said, 'Hey, man, if I were you, I wouldn't go in the water because they're still harassing us.' What I didn't realize is they were just starting to integrate the beaches, so they still had a black area for blacks to swim in. But in the area where we stopped, there was no swimming in the ocean. So I just sat in the sand and played by myself while the other players went into the water.
That night we decided to go to someplace––a bar, or restaurant, or something. As we walked in, I was walking in behind some of the other players and the door guy says, 'Hey, you can't come in here. We're not integrating.' So they put me out. From that experience, I kind of learned that I was going to have to go out in the evenings by myself, especially as we traveled through the south. I would just go look for the railroad tracks and just go to the other side of the railroad tracks and have a ball. Coach [Glen] Sample, he was worried about me. He would say, 'Why can't you just stay in?' And I said, 'Well, I want to go out like the rest of the players.' So he was a Nervous Nellie, because I would go out by myself. That year, it was really kind of enlightening to see just how the south was, because in Cincinnati, even though Cincinnati really touches Kentucky and Kentucky is the south, we weren't quite as restricted.
My suspicions are––and I don't know this, and Coach [Sample] never told me this while I was playing––that I think they probably had to call ahead and double-check to see if I was going to have an issue [being allowed at the hotel]. He never said it, but I can't imagine that they would take that risk.
Coach Sample, he actually liked me. He was kind of fatherly. He probably realized that there was a risk having me on the team, and so he tried to make sure that I was as comfortable as I could be. But he wanted me to stay in and not go out like the rest of the players. I told him that wasn't fair and I assured him that I wasn't going to go do anything really crazy. Back at that time, in that part of the '60s, it just wasn't the best time to be by yourself, you know, if you're in the South."
On whether being the first black baseball player weighed on him:
"Since I was, like, the only black baseball player at Hughes [High School], it was not that abnormal to me to be the only black player on the team [at UC]. And I don't think I ever ran into another black baseball player [in high school] other than when we played Taft, because my brother and Jimmy Wynn played for Taft. I was so used to being the only person around that it was kind of normal, if we're talking baseball, that I would be the only [black player] there.
It got a little shaky if you went to a place like Southern Illinois and some of those kinds of towns where you knew that you weren't going to be allowed in any place. You know, you'd be extra careful that you just didn't go in and say, 'Hey, I'm allowed to do whatever I want.' I knew my place. I wasn't raised that way, but I adjusted to it. Especially when you're not allowed to swim in the ocean. I mean, who cares about who swims in the ocean? They got all that garbage in there, anyway. I realized quickly that I better not start trying to integrate some part of the beach by myself in Jacksonville.
My mom always gave me confidence that I was somebody, so it wasn't that it wore on my shoulders or anything like that. It was like, 'You don't want to know me? I don't care, you're missing out.' So that certainly helped me, when you're getting ready to go in someplace to eat and you don't know whether they're gonna let you come in or not."
On playing pickup games with Oscar Robertson as a high schooler:
"They used to play in the gym during the offseason, so we would go over to the gym that they played at. It was right across the street from my high school. We'd sit around and try and get a pickup game. One time they needed a fill-in. I wasn't on Oscar's team, but I was on the team that Oscar was playing, you know, five on five. And I'm thinking, 'I can't believe it. I'm here playing a pickup basketball game with The Big O.' You quickly realize that you are in a different league of basketball when you're playing against him. Even though I was like fifth in the city in scoring in basketball, there was absolutely no competition. He was just that good. And they had Paul Hogue. I mean, they were like the bee's knees in basketball at the time. But that one time I got the chance to be a fifth player, it was pretty clear to me that not playing college basketball was the right decision."