Parker moved fast, broke things

The Pirates' one-man band died Saturday, just short of his Cooperstown moment.

Phillies’ fans, or their fathers, will remember it well. Dave Parker would come to the plate at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium, and organist Vinnie LaScheid would turn his instrument into an Egyptian flute.

Then Parker would smack a 2-run double down the rightfield line. In the booth, Richie Ashburn would turn to Harry Kalas, the Phillies’ play-by-play man, and say, with irritation, “I’m getting a little tired of that snake-charmer music, Harry.”

Pirates’ trainer Tony Bartirome had nicknamed Parker “The Cobra.” The National League looked everywhere and couldn’t find a mongoose. There was no better player in baseball during the late 70s. Parker had stretched the template for major league outfielders, who were supposed to be slow if they were big, or incapable of fielding if they could hit. There was no fine print on Parker’s baseball card. He tilted ballgames, especially important ones, because he believed that “September is pantyhose month. No nonsense.” He did everything on the field that people demanded, except pretend that he wasn’t all that.

Parker was 6-foot-5 and 230. At various times he led his league in doubles, hits, RBI, batting average, slugging percentage, OPS, sacrifice flies and intentional walks. He was the MVP in 1978, and twice he stole 20 bases and had three Gold Gloves. He hit .290 and had 2,712 hits and four 100-RBI seasons, and when he was 39 in Milwaukee he played 157 games. But the best thing he did was throw. When he gunned down Brian Downing at the plate in 1979, he permanently thrust himself into any All-Star Game compendium, but Pittsburghers weren’t surprised. He did that all the time from rightfield, just as Roberto Clemente had. In 1977 he had 26 assists and participated in nine double plays. After that, the opposing third-base coaches brought stop signs to the box.

Parker was 13 when Muhammad Ali won the heavyweight title for the first time. He was paying attention. “When the leaves turn brown, I’ll have the batting crown,” he said before he won the first of his two batting titles. He was his own best advocate, but he did it with a wink and an innocuous grin, and he fit right into the cacophony of the Pirates’ clubhouse. That was the team that adopted “We Are Family” as a theme, with Sister Sledge performing it on top of the dugout during the ‘79 N.L. playoffs, and with Willie Stargell explaining their attitude: “When the game starts, they say Play Ball. They don’t say Work Ball.”

“I’m just a guy who grew up in a total fun-loving environment,” Parker said. “I try to create that, wherever I go.”

Parker trash-talked his teammates inside the room, and then they followed him outside. Soon his knees went bad, and the home fans turned against him when he signed a five-year, $5 million deal, although they didn’t know that much of the money was deferred. Parker hurt his knee, gained weight, and had to duck and dodge projectiles from his own crowd. Family, indeed. Instead of enshrining him, the Pirates sued him to recover $5.3 million of salary, maintaining that the drugs impaired his performance. The two sides settled out of court, but the Pirates never retired his number 39, although they’ve retired nine others. Nick Gonzales, who wears 39 for the current bedraggled Pirates, said he’d be happy to give it up.

Parker needed a couple of sequels to make everything right. He found his first in Cincinnati, his hometown, where he used to walk to Crosley Field and talk to Frank Robinson and Vada Pinson outside the clubhouse. It’s also the town where he was known as a fearsome running back, until the knee detoured his ambitions.

Parker drove in 125 runs for the Reds in 1985, when he was 34, and finished second in MVP voting. He was fifth the next year when he drove in 116. The next stop was Oakland, where he completed the lineup card that also featured Rickey Henderson, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire. The Bash Brothers won the 1989 World Series and no others, and Parker’s 97 RBIs were consequential.

But 15 sets of Hall of Fame voters rejected him. Was it because he admittedly used and sold cocaine, and was suspended for a year? There can be no other rational explanation. Commissioner Peter Ueberroth commuted the sentence when Parker, and others, agreed to contribute 10 percent of their salaries to drug rehab programs, and performed community service as well. But Tim Raines was cited in the same trial and was voted into Cooperstown, by the writers, in his 10th year of eligibility.

Parker had a safety net. A 16-person Veterans Committee, largely composed of ex-players and baseball executives, could retroactively vote him in. On three occasions Parker came up short, getting a maximum of seven votes when he needed 12. This is the same roadblock that Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are facing. But the committee changes each year. Marvin Miller, who with Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson formed the most influential trio in the history of baseball, was getting nowhere with the Veterans Committee until, one day, he got in. Last December Parker got 14 votes, and Dick Allen, who had been spurned more often than Parker, got 13.

That was a day of deliverance. Saturday brought back the injustice. Parker died, at age 74, just 31 days short of his induction ceremony. He had been dealing with Parkinson’s Disease. No one knew what kind of speech he would be capable of giving, but surely that would have been a poignant last hurrah. “I’ve been working on that speech for 15 years,” Parker said.

But, unlike Allen, he at least knew he was a Hall of Famer before he left. Baseball waited until Pete Rose died before it allowed the Veterans Committee to consider him. (And now a word from Draft Kings….)

There are a lot of Cobras in the game today, large men who twitch fast. But Parker really wasn’t serpentine. He was more like one of those Cobra sports cars that Carroll Shelby designed, with a 427 engine that you don’t find in such a chassis. Maybe Parker’s value will increase with time, like that car. Not many players bring both the words and the music.