Paul Sullivan: Dick Allen is a baseball legend — Hall of Fame or not. And his place in White Sox history is secure.

CHICAGO — Growing up at Comiskey Park in the late 1960s and early 1970s was like having a giant playground built just for you and your friends.

The Chicago White Sox were not a good team, and the ballpark was usually empty. You could go anywhere you wanted, so we would spend much of the game walking around the vast concourse from home plate to the bleachers or venture into the upper deck. A trip to Comiskey included a Sox game, but watching the Sox wasn’t why we went.

That all changed when Dick Allen arrived on the South Side in 1972.

The Sox suddenly started winning again, the ballpark got crowded and whenever Allen stepped to the plate with his 40-ounce bat, the moment seemed frozen in time. Everyone paid attention because every at-bat brought the promise of something you never had seen before.

Maybe that’s why Allen’s death Monday at age 78 was felt by so many Chicagoans of a certain age.

Allen’s career on the South Side was a mere blip in our baseball-loving lives, lasting only three seasons from 1972 to ’74. He had been gone for nearly five decades, and he rarely returned to Chicago. There are no reminders of his Sox career painted on the walls of Guaranteed Rate Field, as there are for Bo Jackson, another legend who played in only 108 games in a Sox uniform.

The franchise Allen helped save never fully recognized his contributions, so it was up to baby boomer Sox fans to keep the stories alive.

Fortunately, Sox fans did remember Allen, as he acknowledged during a phone interview I conducted with him last month. He called his stay in Chicago the best time of his career, and he remembered fans giving him his space and treating him like a king, in stark contrast to his years in Philadelphia, when Allen was forced to wear a batting helmet in the field to dodge batteries being thrown at his head.

“The image they print, I’m not that guy,” he told me at the start of our conversation. “I don’t sound like that kind of guy to me.”

I never knew Allen, but those who knew him best concurred. Former Sox teammates Bill Melton and Rich “Goose” Gossage called him a great teammate and a respected leader in the clubhouse.

“He was a real man,” Gossage said. “There was zero nonsense in him. And when it came to baseball and he was in the dugout, we listened. He once said: ‘Why don’t you (bleeping) guys watch the game? You might learn something.’

“Boy, you could hear a pin drop. You talk about badasses. He was a true badass.”

They didn’t measure exit velocity back in the day, so we can’t prove Allen’s line drives were the hardest-hit balls of his or any other era.

Some things we just know because our eyes tell us so.

Gossage loves telling the story of a line drive Allen hit past Mickey Lolich’s ear at Tiger Stadium that “undressed” the Detroit Tigers pitcher. Tigers center fielder Mickey Stanley took a step in, then watched it sailed over his head to the wall.

Lolich stayed on the ground for a while, and afterward reporters asked if the liner had hit him.

“No,” Lolich said. “I thought it was going to hit the center-field fence.”

Then why did he stay on the ground?

“Because I thought it was going to ricochet off the fence and come back and kill me,” Lolich dryly replied.

That 1972 Sox team was a blast to watch, especially if you were a kid used to seeing them lose. They went head to head in the American League West with the Oakland A’s, who were in the first year of their three straight World Series championship seasons.

The A’s had stars such as Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Joe Rudi, Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter and Ken Holtzman. The Sox had Allen, Melton, Wilbur Wood, Stan Bahnsen and two promising kid relievers in Gossage and Terry Forster.

On Aug. 6, the Sox trailed the A’s by 4 1/2 games. But they won 14 of their next 18 to go up by 1 1/2. Allen hit .349 with a 1.179 OPS during that stretch, which included his legendary home run to center field at Comiskey off New York Yankees pitcher Lindy McDaniel.

In the end, the Sox were no match for one of the greatest teams of the last 60 years.

“But we gave them a run for their money,” Gossage said. “Dick put us on his shoulders, and he carried us through that whole season.”

Gossage, a Hall of Famer, credited Allen, manager Chuck Tanner and pitching coach Johnny Sain for teaching him how to pitch in the major leagues.

“All the stars were aligned when I got to the big leagues with the Sox,” he said. “I could throw a ball through a car wash without it getting wet, but I had no idea what a breaking ball was, an off-speed pitch or a changeup. Then to run into Johnny Sain, and Dick Allen putting me under his wing …”

Allen told Gossage to throw inside more often and let hitters know the inner half of the plate belonged to him. Gossage was afraid he would hit someone in the head.

“He said: ‘Good, the best thing you can do is drill a couple of these (bleeps). They’re all watching over there in that dugout,’ ” Gossage said. “Bob Gibson always said: ‘Half of that plate is mine. It’s up to you to guess which half I’m coming after.’

“I was just a rookie. Little did I know I was watching the greatest player I ever saw play. And that’s quite a statement. I played with Dave Parker, Willie Stargell, but I never saw balls hit that hard — ever. He did so many things I never saw before or that have never been done since. Dick was the smartest baseball man I ever met. Chuck Tanner told me that before I found out myself. It was an education that all the money in the world couldn’t pay for.”

Gossage broke down and cried thinking about the time Allen and Tanner showed up unannounced at his Hall of Fame induction, driving together from Pennsylvania to Cooperstown to be there for him. He’s upset Allen didn’t live long enough to join him in the Hall.

“He belongs in the damn Hall of Fame,” Gossage said. “They shouldn’t even have a Hall of Fame if he isn’t in it.”

This horrible year has been a hard one for baseball legends. We’ve lost Gibson, Tom Seaver, Al Kaline, Whitey Ford, Lou Brock and Joe Morgan among others. Hall of Fame or not, Allen belongs in that group, and his place in Sox history is secure.

“We really lost a good individual and a great White Sox player,” Melton said. “And he should be spoken about for many, many years in White Sox lore.”