Allen Lewis

Field Allen Lewis
(Allen Lewis)

• School Haverford College

• Born December 17, 1916 in Beechville, PA USA
• Died September 14, 2003 in Clearwater, FL USA

Biographical Information

From 1946 to 1972, the Allen Lewis byline became a familiar sight and desired destination for Philadelphia Inquirer readers seeking their daily dose of Phillies coverage. A member of the 1940 graduating class of Haverford College, where he'd played both football and baseball, Lewis was drafted the following year and achieved the rank of Air Force captain by the end of World War II. Upon his return, he briefly covered the Philadelphia Warriors of the Basketball Association of America, the fore-runner of the NBA, and chronicled that team's championship in 1946. From 1960 to 1974, he served as chairman of Major League Baseball's Scoring Committee. Lewis retired from the Inquirer in 1979; from February of that year until 2000, he was a member of the Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee.

The writing bug, however, was not quite so easy to shake; in 1980, Lewis came out of retirement temporarily to assist with the Inquirer's coverage of the Phillies' long-overdue and, ultimately, triumphant World Series appearance. Later, the restless retiree provided a weekly baseball trivia question for Sunday papers. In 1981, both Lewis and Bob Addie were awarded the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, which gained them admission to the writers' wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame.