Rod Allen

Roderick Bernet Allen

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 6' 1", Weight 185 lb.
• High School Santa Monica High School
• Debut April 7, 1983
• Final Game October 2, 1988
• Born October 5, 1959 in Los Angeles, CA USA

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Biographical Information

Although Rod Allen had only 50 at-bats in the majors, he had a long minor league career from 1977 to 1988, hitting 121 home runs and batting .291. He was in the Mexican League briefly in 1986 and spent most of the 1980s in Triple A ball, hitting .324 in both 1983 and 1988. Allen played for the Hiroshima Carp from 1989 to 1991, hitting .288/.356/.510 overall and homering 25 times in 1990.

After his playing career ended, Allen was a coach for the Kane County Cougars in 1994-1995, and a broadcaster for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Detroit Tigers. With the Tigers, he teamed up with play-by-play man Mario Impemba on FOX Sports from 2002 to 2018. On September 4, 2018, he was involved in what was described as a severe fight with Impemba following a game against the Chicago White Sox. The two were sent home on different planes and were suspended while the network investigated the incident, as FOX Sports asked both announcers to stay home for the remainder of the year. It was announced after the season that they would not be back in 2019. In his first comments on the incident the following January, Allen stated that media accounts of the fight were not accurate and that it had been blown out of all proportion.

Allen's two sons both played minor league ball. Rod Allen Jr. was drafted by the New York Yankees in the 2004 amateur draft and Andrew Allen was drafted by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2007 amateur draft.

Further Reading

• Anthony Fenech: "Detroit Tigers' Mario Impemba, Rod Allen have 'severe' physical incident", Detroit Free Press, September 6, 2018. [1]
• Anthony Fenech: "What really happened between Detroit Tigers announcers involved in altercation?", Detroit Free Press, October 11, 2018. [2]
• Rick Vosik: "Rod Allen", in Mark Pattison and David Raglin, ed.: Detroit Tigers 1984: What A Start! What A Finish!, SABR Publications, Phoenix, AZ, 2012, pp. 38-40. ISBN 1933599448

Related Sites

• Rod Allen at the SABR Bio Project
• Video of Allen in a bench-clearing brawl in Japan.