Dave Parker, "The Cobra at Twilight"

 

Proof that Dave Parker was a serious badass.

Dave Parker winning the MVP Award for the 1979 All-Star Game.

Dave Parker with his hometown Cincinnati Reds.

I’ve liked Dave Parker for a long time. I wasn’t around for the Cobra’s 1975-1980 heyday, but by the time I started following baseball in 1986-87, he was one of those cool veteran players who seemed larger than life. You know, one of those players whose stat line filled the whole back of the baseball card, leaving no room for extra nuggets of information.

I recently watched the 2019 MLB documentary “The Cobra at Twilight,” an excellent look at Parker’s life and career. Parker was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2013, and the film shows Parker going to the gym and doctor’s appointments. The contrast between Parker’s imposing strength during his prime and how tough it is for him to get around now is sad. However, it’s obvious from the film that Parker’s spirit remains strong.

When I was a kid staring at the back of his baseball cards, Dave Parker’s stats seemed enormous to me: 339 home runs! 1,493 RBI’s! Wow! At the time Parker retired after the 1991 season, he was 32^nd on the all-time list in RBI’s and tied for 47^th on the home run list. He’s now 58^th in RBI’s and tied for 102^nd in home runs.

As I started to follow the Hall of Fame voting more closely, I always thought that Parker was underappreciated by the BBWAA. For the 15 years Parker was on the BBWAA ballot, his highest vote total was 24.5% in 1998, his second year on the ballot. Parker was a player who was regarded as an elite power hitter during his career, but by the time he hit the Hall of Fame ballot, 339 home runs didn’t seem as amazing.

Because Parker didn’t walk a lot, sabermetric stats haven’t helped his Hall of Fame case. Parker’s excellence is captured in the main hitting stats found on the back of his baseball card. Sabermetrics aren’t kind to Parker’s fielding, despite his reputation during his career as an excellent right fielder. The sabermetric community hasn’t taken up Parker’s case with the same fervor that they’ve adopted Tim Raines and Bert Blyleven, to name two contemporaries of Parker’s who saw their vote totals soar and were eventually elected by the BBWAA.

Looking at Parker’s WAR you can see some of the limitations of WAR as a statistic. Look at Parker’s 1986 season. He appeared in all 162 games for the Reds, smacked 174 hits, with 31 doubles, 31 home runs, 116 RBIs, and a .273 batting average. Parker’s OPS+ was 117, and he led the league in total bases with 304. He was 10^th in the NL in slugging, 7^th in hits, tied for 2^nd in home runs, 2^nd in RBIs, and 4^th in extra base hits. According to WAR, that season was worth 0.3 WAR. Parker’s offensive WAR for the year was 2.1, but his defensive WAR was -2.5, which negated most of his value. So, 0.3 WAR means that you could have taken any schlub off the bench at AAA, plugged him into the lineup and he would have produced as well as Parker would have. Okay, I’ll take the leading slugger from the 1986 Denver Zephyrs, Lloyd McClendon. Did McClendon ever hit 30 home runs and have 100 RBIs in the majors? Well, Lloyd did hit 35 home runs and drive in 154 runs, but that was over his entire 570 game major league career. It’s not that easy to replace the Cobra, WAR!

Since his final appearance on the BBWAA ballot in 2011, Parker has appeared on several Era Committee ballots, and I’ve written about Parker in 2017 and 2019. Parker hasn’t been elected to the Hall of Fame yet, but in 2019 he was named on 7 of 16 ballots, falling just 5 votes short of election. For as much as these small committees have been criticized over the years, they’ve also made some excellent selections recently: Ron Santo, Alan Trammell and Ted Simmons, three players who were wrongly overlooked by the BBWAA.

Much like Steve Garvey, Dave Parker has the “fame” part of the Hall of Fame covered. Parker was a 7-time All-Star, won 2 batting titles, was the 1978 NL MVP, won 3 Gold Gloves, had an amazing 1979 All-Star Game, where he threw out two baserunners and was voted MVP, and played on 2 World Series Champion teams a decade apart—the 1979 Pirates and the 1989 Oakland A’s.

At his peak, from 1975-1980, Dave Parker was one of the best players in baseball. As a measure of how contemporary baseball writers viewed him, Parker was listed in the 1981 edition of The 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time, by Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig. Ritter and Honig were taking a huge gamble when they chose players who were not even halfway through their careers for the 1981 edition of the book, but it says something about Parker’s stature in the game that he was viewed as an all-time great by two very respected baseball writers and historians. When Ritter and Honig updated their book in 1986, Parker was one of the players who was removed from the book. Other players who Ritter and Honig had second thoughts about were George Foster, Fred Lynn, and Tony Oliva. It also says something about how far Parker’s star had fallen that he didn’t make the 1986 edition.

In the early 1980’s, Dave Parker was clearly a star in decline. Injuries cost him much of the 1982 season, and it seemed like much of the power had been drained from the Cobra’s bat. What we later learned was that Parker had a cocaine problem during the early 80’s. After the 1983 season, Parker signed as a free agent with his hometown Cincinnati Reds, and he came roaring back with a terrific year in 1985. As his drug problems made headlines, Parker was able to maintain focus on the game, and led the NL in doubles, RBI, and total bases, finishing 2^nd in the MVP voting behind Willie McGee.

Dave Parker was a hugely self-confident player, and the film likens him to Muhammad Ali. Whereas now Parker’s braggadocio might look less out of place, in the 1970’s, it was still something of a rarity for a Black player to be so outspoken. Did that influence how the media of the time covered Parker? I’m sure it did.

Parker was very different from the Pirates’ other Black superstars. Roberto Clemente was the humble, graceful, quiet star. (Even so, the press of the time often portrayed him as a hypochondriac.) And Willie Stargell was the chubby and loveable clubhouse leader. Parker was more in the Reggie Jackson mold, telling reporters, “When the leaves turn brown, I’ll be wearing the batting crown.”

“The Cobra at Twilight” tells us that things really changed for Parker after he signed a huge contract during the 1978-79 off-season. The deal averaged out to a little more than a million dollars a year, although some of that was deferred. Adjusted for inflation, that would be like paying Parker $3.6 million a year in 2021 dollars, which would be a steal. Once a player gets a huge contract, it’s easy for the fans to resent them. Especially when Parker gained a bunch of weight. Then it’s easy to paint that player as “lazy” and “unmotivated.” Fans threw batteries and even a bullet at Parker in right field. I was shocked to see some of the editorial cartoons of Parker that ran in Pittsburgh papers at the time. The drawings were racist and insulting.

It’s hard not to want just a little more from Dave Parker’s stats. He was such a great player that you can’t help but want the numbers to be a little bigger. According to Baseball-Reference, over 162 games, Parker averaged 178 hits, 22 home runs, and 98 RBI’s. So, what would happen if we gave Parker his 162-game average for his mid-career decline? I know, this is getting into speculative territory, but stay with me here. I’m not giving Parker extra seasons or theorizing what his stats would be if he could have hit 40 home runs every season he played. Let’s just look at his seasons from 1980-84, plus 1976, the one off-year during his peak. These stats assume that Parker doesn’t get injured, and that there’s no players strike in 1981, so a full season would have been played that year.

So, if Parker could have just played to his 162-game average during those 6 seasons, what career numbers would he have ended up with?

Hits: move from 2,712 to 3,004

HR: move from 339 to 399

RBI: move from 1,493 to 1,686

Obviously, if Parker had those numbers, he’d be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. And really, we can forget about homers and RBIs: once he moves over the 3,000-hit threshold, he would have been in. And you probably don’t have to mess with 6 seasons like I did to get Parker in the Hall. If there’s no players strike in 1981, and he has a decent 1982 season and doesn’t get hurt, let’s add 100 hits to each of those seasons. Now he’s at 2,912 hits. Let’s not even adjust his other numbers. Okay, we’ll give him 10 more RBI, so he gets over 1,500. Does he get into the Hall of Fame with 2,912 hits, 339 home runs, and 1,503 RBI? I would think so.

I know that’s all speculation, but to me it shows how close to being a first-ballot Hall of Famer Dave Parker was. And personally, I would just like to see Dave Parker in the Hall of Fame. Dave Parker was cool. He was a 6’5” badass who had a pierced ear and wore a Star of David. His answer to why he wore it was simple: “My name’s David and I’m a star.” The Hall of Fame would simply be a little cooler if Dave Parker were in it.