PHILADELPHIA — The cars were already clean sitting inside the showroom, but that didn’t stop 9-year-old Ed Kardon from grabbing a rag on a Saturday morning and dipping it into Windex.

The new salesman at his father’s dealership — Phillies superstar Dick Allen — needed help.

Allen was holding out for a bigger contract from the Phillies in February 1967, so he sold Chevrolets for Michael Kardon in Mount Holly while the rest of the team reported to spring training in Clearwater, Fla. Allen even had his own desk.

“He’s like, ‘Come here, Edward. Clean this car,’ ” Ed Kardon said. “He would point out smudge marks. Then he’d come back and say, ‘Yeah, that looks good. Let’s clean this other one.’ He bossed me around a little bit, but that’s OK. He was my idol.”

Allen — whose Hall of Fame induction will be recognized on Saturday at Citizens Bank Park — hit 40 homers with 110 RBIs in 1966 despite missing a month with a shoulder injury. He wanted a $100,000 contract for 1967 after earning $42,500 the previous season.

Phillies general manager John Quinn balked. So 24-year-old Allen reported to the Kardon Chevrolet showroom instead of spring training.

“I always felt like if I doubled my production, my salary ought to be doubled,” Allen told the Philadelphia Daily News in February 1967. “Because if I go the other way, I know I’m going to be cut that much. So far, all they’ve said is that my figure is unreasonable. Well, Willie Mays and Henry Aaron make that kind of money. You know I’m not a braggart and I don’t go around boasting, but I don’t feel like they can do anything better than I can do. I want to get paid for what I can do.”

The Kardons had season tickets on the third-base line at Connie Mack Stadium, seats that Michael Kardon purchased from John Taxin, the owner of the Old Original Bookbinder’s. They were perfect. You could peek across the diamond into the Phillies’ dugout and watch Allen’s home runs soar to left field like arrows shot from a bow.

“He hit some shots,” Ed Kardon said. “I remember seeing him hit one out of Connie Mack Stadium. To a 9-year-old, he was larger than life.”

The Kardon brothers — just like nearly every other kid in Philly — loved Allen. So it’s easy to imagine how they felt when their hero rolled into their father’s dealership.

Michael Kardon had a rapport with Philly athletes, and he brought them to Mount Holly to promote new releases or gave them demo cars to drive. Peanuts Lowrey, a coach with the Phillies, connected Kardon to Allen. Ed Kardon remembers watching his father talk to Allen and Mays before a game at Connie Mack.

“I’m sitting there as a 9-year-old kid like, ‘Whoa. This is crazy,’ ” he said.

So when Allen needed a job in 1967, the future Hall of Famer went to Kardon’s Chevrolet.

“Right now, he is the world’s strongest car salesman,” Stan Hochman wrote after interviewing Allen at the dealership. “He is determined to learn the job, although it conflicts with his basic personality. He is too honest, too blunt, too disrupted by haggling. When it comes time to appraise that trade-in and set a price on a new Impala, he sometimes sputters and turns for help. But he could learn to play third base, he can learn to sell cars.”

Allen already was a polarizing figure. Two years earlier, the Kardons were at Connie Mack Stadium when a batting-practice scuffle between Allen and teammate Frank Thomas led to Thomas hitting Allen with a bat after calling him racial slurs.

Allen was regularly booed and played the field with a batting helmet to protect himself from bottles that some fans threw. His 1967 season ended with Allen injuring his hand after he said he pushed it through his car’s headlight during a storm. By then, his exit from Philadelphia felt near.

But none of that mattered for the month he worked at the Chevy dealership.

“My father was crazy about the guy,” Marty Kardon said. “My dad was very supportive of him. My father welcomed him, and he was grateful. I’m sure he could sell cars because people knew him and loved him. He was a good guy. He wasn’t stuck-up. He was funny, too. He would make jokes. He didn’t have a stick up his butt.”

Ed Kardon cleaned cars while customers flocked to Allen, who signed autographs and tried to move Impalas and Chevelles.

“I’ll always remember how nice he was to me,” Ed Kardon said. “Just so nice. I felt like he loved me.”

Allen finally signed a contract with the Phillies on March 16, 16 days after camp started. The contact was worth $75,000 — then the second-highest deal in Phillies history — after he negotiated directly with owner Bob Carpenter.

Spring training, Allen said, was just a lot of standing around. He said he would need just a few days to get up to speed. Allen left two days later for Florida, bringing an end to his career in the showroom. Ed Kardon still has the baseball — “To Edward, best wishes” — that was signed by his hero who moonlighted as a car salesman.

“You didn’t think he was going to sell cars all summer, did you?” teammate Bill White said when Allen finally arrived in Clearwater.

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