Bill Kashatus landed the final interview with Dick Allen before he died. His childhood hero then asked for a favor.

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — They talked on the phone late at night about old Westerns, rural Pennsylvania, the Quakers, and the Underground Railroad.

But the conversation frequently stalled whenever Bill Kashatus asked Dick Allen about baseball, the game that made Allen a mythical figure in the 1960s to a generation of Phillies fans like Kashatus.

Kashatus became close with Allen, who spoke to the author for the two books he wrote but steered those late-night conversations elsewhere. Kashatus considered Allen, his first sports hero, a friend. So he drove to Wampum — Allen’s tiny Western Pennsylvania hometown — to say goodbye in November 2020 when it became clear that cancer was taking over.

“He said, ‘Hoss, I’m going to miss those phone calls,’” Kashatus said. “Then there was this silence. He goes, ‘You always wanted to ask me questions. Go ahead and ask them now.’”

Kashatus didn’t come prepared, but he started firing away. He asked Allen, who finally will be inducted Sunday into the Baseball Hall of Fame, about his hometown and his days playing high school basketball. They talked about the $70,000 signing bonus he used to buy his mom a house in Wampum and the racism he faced as a minor leaguer in Little Rock. Allen talked about the 1965 incident with Frank Thomas that changed his Philadelphia story and his return in 1975.

Allen’s hands, the ones he famously used to swing a 40-ounce bat, were weakened, and his body was frail. He died just 10 days later.

This — an impromptu conversation at his dining room table with a friend — was the final interview of Allen’s life. And Kashatus ended it by asking his hero if he ever thought he’d make the Hall of Fame. Allen said he had no interest in campaigning, something Kashatus and others did for years on Allen’s behalf.

“I got all the enjoyment from playing that God intended for me,” Allen told Kashatus. “Whatever I did on the field will stay in people’s minds and hearts for the rest of their lives. Those folks who vote players into the Hall are nothing more than people with their own opinions and biases. Many of them have made their judgments on me without facts to back it up. I’m not going to change that. Whether I get into the Hall of Fame or not will take care of itself. I can’t concern myself with things I can’t control. I’m happy with the way my career turned out.”

That was it. It was time for Kashatus to say goodbye to his friend and head home, knowing that it would be their last meeting. He asked Allen if there was anything else he could do.

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“Yeah, Hoss,” Allen said. “Can you give me a shave?”

So Kashatus grabbed his childhood hero’s electric razor, held his face, and trimmed his beard.

“I often wondered, ‘Why did he do that?’” Kashatus said. “Was that his way of saying goodbye? There was something very personal about it that will stay with me until the day I die. What you’re doing is trusting someone and letting them put your hands on you. That’s a very personal thing. My grandfather used to ask me to do that. How many people get to shave their childhood heroes, right?”

Kashatus grew up in Northeast Philadelphia and caught his first Phillies game in July 1965. Days earlier, Frank Thomas struck Allen with a bat during batting practice after Allen took contention with Thomas’ racial taunts. The incident became big news — “The press made a much bigger thing out of it than it was,” Allen told Kashatus in that final interview — and Thomas was released while Allen was ordered to stay silent.

Fans took sides and Allen, who was the National League’s Rookie of the Year a year earlier, became an easy target for an already racially divided city. Kashatus can remember the boos and racial slurs from the crowd as Allen stepped to the plate with the bases loaded. Allen hit a grand slam. The crowd turned.

“Everyone starts cheering,” Kashatus said. “The mind games were unbelievable. From that point on, I was just so intrigued by him. I just had this sympathy for him and became fascinated by how he was treated so cruelly and rose above it. He was better than that. It would have been easy for him to go into the stands. It would have been easy for him to flip the bird. It would have been easy for him to lash out. And he didn’t. That takes a lot of character.”

Kashatus was introduced years later to his idol through Howie Bedell, a former Phillies player and scout. He wanted to write a book about Allen, and Bedell convinced the quiet, reclusive slugger to give Kashatus a chance. Allen sat down three times with Kashatus for what became the 2004 book September Swoon. Allen wrote Kashatus a note after the book was published, thanking him for telling his story.

“From then on, we became close,” said Kashatus, who has sent a nomination to the Pennsylvania Historical Museum Commission for a blue-and-gold historic marker to be installed next summer for Allen in Wampum.

Kashatus shaved Allen’s beard and asked his friend if he wanted the mustache and mutton-chop sideburns he wore in 1972 with the White Sox when he won the American League MVP. Allen agreed before telling Kashatus to keep shaving.

Kashatus trimmed more and told Allen he looked like did in 1975 when he returned to Philly and received three standing ovations in his first game. Allen looked in the mirror and told “Hoss”— “That’s what he always called me,” Kashatus said — to keep going.

» READ MORE: Dick Allen never liked special attention in his hometown. Now his friends in Wampum, Pa. are celebrating his Hall of Fame induction.

Kashatus shaved off Allen’s sideburns, removed Allen’s black beret, and began to trim his hair.

“What the hell are you doing, Hoss?” Allen said.

Kashatus said there was just one last look left: the cut Allen wore in 1964 when he captured the imagination of a generation. The friends laughed. Soon, it was time to say goodbye.

“The drive there flew by, but the drive home was terrible,” Kashatus said. “You knew you were going to lose a childhood hero who also became a friend. And there’s nothing you could do about it. I miss those phone calls. I miss getting called out of the blue when someone isn’t going so well because he could sense that. If he cared, he really did care about you.”