Dick Allen’s daughter was killed in 1991. His ‘biggest fan’ would have loved his Hall of Fame induction.

Mike Tollin called Dick Allen, the Phillies great he idolized as a boy growing up in Havertown and later befriended while both lived in Los Angeles, after he heard the news: Terri Allen, Allen’s beloved daughter, had been shot to death. Allen told Tollin to drive over to his house.

What do you say to someone after something as awful as this? Is there really anything to say? How can you help?

Allen captivated a generation of Philadelphians by hitting home runs that sailed over the roof of Connie Mack Stadium. His uniform sleeves were shortened to showcase his hulking biceps and he swung a 42-ounce bat. To kids of the 1960s, Allen was a superhero. But even superheroes feel pain.

Tollin, who used to tell his mother he’d come to the dinner table after Allen batted, drove his bright blue Studebaker Lark to Allen’s home in Hollywood shortly after Terri was killed in May 1991.

He talked to Allen’s daughter on the phone a year earlier, wowed by her enthusiasm and knowing she had a bright future ahead of her. He knew how much Allen loved his daughter, who was born two months after Allen reached the majors in 1963.

His childhood hero stood at the door and wrapped Tollin with the arms he once used to so easily swing that heavy bat. There were no words. Tollin had a basketball in the backseat of his car. They grabbed it and walked to the public court across the street.

“We just shot,” Tollin said. “And talked. And ultimately cried. He can shoot, by the way.”

Terri Allen and her mother, Barbara, would meet the Phillies at the airport so they could pick up her father after road trips. Dick Allen would be behind the wheel, but Terri would hang over him from the backseat and cover his eyes, so excited that her dad was home again. Soon, mom drove from the airport. Terri Allen loved her dad.

“She was his biggest fan,” said her brother, Richard.

» READ MORE: Playing in Arkansas scarred Dick Allen. Decades later, his son returned to honor his long journey to the Hall of Fame.

She was a cheerleader at Pennridge High School in Perkasie, near the horse farm where her father commuted from when playing for the Phillies in the 1970s. She worked for two seasons as an usherette at Veterans Stadium and studied broadcast journalism at Howard University.

“Everyone felt like they really knew her,” said Tom Moore, who was a few years behind Terri at Pennridge.

Moore, a longtime local sportswriter for the Bucks County Courier Times, was in Maryland in 1984 to cover a college football game when he remembered that Allen was at Howard. This was before Facebook and cellphones, so Moore called a dorm building hoping to find his old friend.

“I said, ‘Hello, is Terri Allen there?’” Moore said. “She said, ‘This is Terri.’ She hesitated. Like who is this? I said, ‘This is Tommy Moore.’ She said ‘Tommy! Tommy!’”

That was Terri Allen. Moore said they were never extremely close — Moore’s sister cheered with her — but Allen kept everyone close. She drove to meet Moore and his friends, reminiscing about their days at Pennridge.

“She was the kind of person that you didn’t forget,” Moore said. “You remembered her, and when you saw her again, you picked up from where you left off even if you hadn’t seen her in a few years.”

Richard Allen was running late for work when someone knocked on the door of the Maryland apartment he shared with his sister and mother. It wasn’t for him, Allen thought. So he ignored it and kept getting dressed. When he left, there was a note on the door: Call me as soon as possible.

A man living a floor above told Allen what happened. The previous night, he was sitting on his balcony when Terri Allen pulled into the lot. A man jumped from the bushes and they exchanged words before she walked away. The man — who police later identified as Clarence E. Ford — shot her in the back. Terri Allen died in the parking lot. She was 27 years old.

“That was rough,” Richard Allen said.

» READ MORE: Dick Allen was one of baseball’s most misunderstood players. But in his hometown of Wampum, Pa., everyone ‘knows the truth.’

Dick Allen was staying at a Red Roof Inn in Laurel, Md. He trashed the room after his son told him the news and then asked where the man was. News accounts said the shooter was an ex-boyfriend, but Richard Allen said the shooter was someone who wanted to be more than “just friends” with his sister. Richard Allen told his father that Ford shot himself while driving away from the police.

“Just as well,” Allen told his son. “Because I would’ve been looking for him.”

A memorial service in Bucks County was packed a few weeks later. The community was stunned. Moore wrote a column about the time he called Terri Allen’s dorm and read it at the church. He still remembers how Barbara Allen said that day how her daughter lit up a room. Spot on.

“She was approachable, friendly, outgoing,” Moore said. “You knew when she was in the room. She had an impact even on just the tone of the room. The mood everyone was in sort of improved when Terri was around.”

Dick Allen’s baseball career was marked by strife. He found death threats on his car as a minor leaguer in Arkansas, and fans threw bottles at him in Philadelphia. He hit 351 home runs, was the Rookie of the Year in 1964, and the American League MVP with the Chicago White Sox in 1972. But it never seemed easy. Retirement proved just as difficult.

“A piece of his life was missing,” said Mike DiMuzio, who met Allen while working on the Phillies grounds crew as a teenager. “He changed. You could just feel that something was missing from Dick when she was gone.”

The Allens had a dishwasher at home but Dick Allen didn’t allow his children to use it. It would teach bad habits, he said. So they washed the dishes by hand after dinner.

“It would take her four hours to do the dishes because every spoon she grabbed turned into a microphone,” her brother said.

» READ MORE: Visiting Dick Allen in the hospital made a 9-year-old realize that his hero was also human

Terri Allen always wanted to be a broadcast journalist, dreaming of one day interviewing her brother after he reached the majors. Richard Allen never did make the majors, but he remembers being hit by a pitch in college and seeing his sister leave the stands and run toward the pitcher.

“That was her,” he said.

She loved The Wizard of Oz, made sure her name was spelled with an “i” instead of a “y,” and always gave hugs like her dad. She teased her father as a teenager by calling him “El Cheapo” when he refused to buy her something.

“He used to always say, ‘Man, oh man,’” Tollin said. “So whenever I hear someone say that, I think of him. And man, oh man, did he love that girl. She was the apple of his eye.”

The game of basketball outside Allen’s home almost felt therapeutic. It was like having a catch. Allen shot and Tollin rebounded. Tollin shot and Allen rebounded. The superstar was at ease.

“You’re sharing space, sharing an emotional connection,” Tollin said. “He wore his emotions on his sleeve. In the category of most misunderstood men in my life, he’s on Mount Rushmore. He was just such a sweet, humble, vulnerable, caring, open, loving human.

» READ MORE: ‘Phillies Extra’ Q&A with John Middleton: Growing up a Dick Allen fan

“He didn’t carry it as a burden. There are people who are dour by nature. He was just a sunny man in general. I always think of him coming with a hug and ‘How’s the kids?’ He knew their names. I always think of him as the guy who had a friendly word for anyone.”

Dick Allen never forgot Terri, but the birth of his grandson four years later helped fill the void.

“His first comment to me was, ‘I don’t mean any harm, but he reminds me of Terri,’” said Richard Allen, who named his son Richard III. “So all the attention went to my son.”

Allen died five years before he was finally voted into the Hall of Fame. Too often the dialogue of his career centered on events like the time he said he injured his hand pushing his car in the rain instead of the 10-year span where he had a higher OPS than Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Willie McCovey. Writers pegged Allen as a clubhouse cancer, while his actual teammates credited him for teaching them how to win.

“I always said I’m not going to the Hall of Fame until Dick Allen gets in. I was in baseball for 51 years, and I was never there. But I’ll be there for this,” said DiMuzio, who retired from the Phillies in 2022 as the director of ballpark operations. “Some people only know what they read about Dick. I’m one of the fortunate ones who learned in the early 1970s that he was a friend of the little guy. His first visit to the Vet was in the grounds crew room.

“I could care less if there was a headlight or if there wasn’t a headlight or any of the other stuff that happened. I just know that one of the best ballplayers I ever saw on the field was Dick Allen. He treated me well.”

This weekend would have been made for Terri Allen. The same girl who smothered her father when he returned from the road would have loved to be with her brothers in Cooperstown, N.Y. El Cheapo is finally in the Hall of Fame.

“She would say something like, ‘I have to find a way up on that stage. I’m saying something,’” Richard Allen said. “A few years before he died, my dad sent me to Wendy’s and said, ‘Can you get me a couple of those chilis.’ Then he started laughing and said, ‘Because you know, I’m El Cheapo.’”