PHILADELPHIA — He was home Sunday night, inside his rowhouse in Southwest Philadelphia, his phone on speaker and connected to a hotel room in north Texas, his television tuned to the MLB Network. He no longer had a catheter snaking through his insides to his bladder. He no longer had a feeding tube filling his body with enough nutrients to keep it running; somehow, he’d forgotten how to swallow, then weeks ago had remembered again. Over the last year, the anxiety that had plagued Mark “Frog” Carfagno for most of his life had intensified. Medication had kept it at bay, but not lately. It had grown so bad that he could not travel to Dallas over the weekend for the announcement for which he’d waited so long: that his friend, his “big brother” Dick Allen, was finally getting into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

“How much anxiety? Over this?” he asked over the phone Monday morning. “Oh, God. I don’t know.”

Does this sound crazy? Does it? Does it sound strange that a 71-year-old man who worked as a groundskeeper for the Phillies at Veterans Stadium, would have so much at stake Sunday — would have so much of himself riding the outcome of a vote to determine who had earned the right to be honored by the Hall of Fame? If it does, you don’t know anything about Frog, and you don’t know anything about his connection to Allen.

About a kid who grew up on the 1900 block of S. Cecil Street. Whose father died at 37 of pneumonia in January 1964, when Frog was just 10. Whose grandfather, John, rode the trolley and the bus to Connie Mack Stadium with him throughout that summer of ‘64, when Allen was the best rookie in the National League, an instant superstar who captivated Frog with his powerful swing, and when it looked for a long time like the Phillies were destined to reach, and even win, the World Series.

A special friendship

That was it. That was all it took. Allen was Frog’s guy, despite the Phillies’ infamous collapse that season. Despite Allen’s sullenness and the stereotype-laden perception of him as lazy and selfish. Despite the clubhouse fight between Allen and Frank Thomas in July 1965 — a fight that Thomas had reportedly ignited with a racist remark — that turned the city against … Allen. If anything, the tension and vitriol hardened Frog’s support for his hero.

“People in Philly are all [ticked] off,” Frog once said. “I remember taking the 33 bus to Connie Mack Stadium. Back then, Girard College was an all-white high school, for underprivileged white kids. Blacks would be protesting outside. Frank Rizzo” — the deputy police commissioner at the time — “would be out there with the mounted police, trying to control order. The bus would go by, and you’d literally duck below the windows because stuff went flying. The bus was 95 percent white. Now you go inside Connie Mack Stadium, and who are you going to take out your frustration on? Number 15, Dick Allen.”

When Allen returned to the Phillies in 1975, after stints with the St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago White Sox, he took a liking to the skinny young fella who made sure the Vet’s pitcher’s mound was always tended just the way Steve Carlton wanted it. “Somebody told him, ‘Look, this kid don’t have a father,’” Frog said. “He came up to me and said, ‘If you ever need anything, tell me. If you don’t, I’m going to be [ticked] off.’”

They became friends and stayed friends. They’d hang out after games, room together during spring training while Allen was working for the Phillies as an instructor, embark on long conversations about the scars Allen still wore from his minor-league days, from his journey from his hometown — Wampum, Pa. — to Williamsport to Little Rock in 1963.

“The Phillies sent him to Arkansas,” Frog said, “which was the worst thing they could have ever done. What did the Dodgers do with Jackie Robinson? They sent him to Montreal. Well, the Phillies sent Dick to Little Rock. He told me nightmare stories. They called him every name, called him ‘Blackbird.’ He told me they slashed his tires, harassed his wife, broke into his house. He called his mom and said he wanted to go home.”

Their relationship would have remained mostly private, would have remained theirs and theirs alone, had Allen’s son Richard not called Frog in the spring of 2013. Richard and his son lived in Williamsport, and the kid couldn’t get through one of his high school basketball games without someone in the stands using his grandfather’s reputation as a cruel cudgel against him. You’re a lazy punk, just like he was. Yes, Richard thought his father’s career — the 351 home runs, the .912 OPS, the stretch from 1964 through 1974 when he was as good as any hitter in the majors — warranted induction into the Hall. Mostly, though, he wanted Frog to help him clean up Dick’s image. Dick wouldn’t lobby on his own behalf. Too proud. A little bitter, still. Could anyone blame him?

So Frog went to work. Frog lapsed into obsession, really. Frog solicited testimonials from Allen’s friends and peers around baseball — players and managers and executives and umpires — and sent them to Cooperstown: ATTN: VETERANS COMMITTEE. Frog created email threads and Facebook groups and flooded the Hall’s officials with emails and phone calls. Frog visited schools to speak to kids about Allen and the racism he faced. Frog enlisted an army of writers and broadcasters and filmmakers and historians to support his campaign.

When Allen fell one vote short of induction in 2014, Frog was undeterred. When Allen fell one vote short again in December 2021 — a year after Allen died at 78 — Frog was devastated, fearing that he himself might not be around to see Allen inducted. As Sunday approached, as he sat there at home these last few weeks, struggling in body and mind through November and into December, he reflected on all the evidence he’d marshaled, all the arguments he’d made, all the steps he had taken, to make sure that Allen was at the top of everyone’s mind once it was time for the votes to be cast. Had he done everything he could, and what had it cost him?

‘I’m doing better’

In the hotel room in Dallas — the MLB owners meetings are there this week — Allen’s family waited for the announcement. Frog listened in through his phone, but his TV feed was 10 seconds ahead of theirs. As soon as he heard Josh Rawitch, the Hall’s president, say,… played 15 seasons, from 1963 to 1977 …“I knew right there,” Frog said.

He has received, he estimated, 200 text messages in the day since. The induction ceremony will be on Sunday, July 27, 2025. Frog is optimistic that he’ll be healthy enough by then to make the 260-mile trip to Cooperstown. “I’m not where I want to be,” he said, “but I’m doing better, let’s put it that way.” There ought to be a front-row seat waiting for him that day. No friend could have done more. No friend could deserve it more.

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