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.

Book Review: Baseball's Best Kept Secret, (1997) and Life Is a Hit; Don't Strike Out, (2014) by Al Oliver

Life Is a Hit; Don't Strike Out, by Al Oliver, 2014.

Baseball's Best Kept Secret, by Al Oliver and Andrew O'Toole, 1997.

A handsome head shot of Al with the Pirates. This photo makes it look like he records for Motown Records in the off-season.

Al Oliver enjoyed some of his best seasons with the Texas Rangers, hitting .319 for them over 4 seasons. And yes, his necklace says "Scoop." That's his nickname because he was so good at scooping up low throws to first base.

Al's 1983 Topps card, after winning the 1982 NL batting title with the Montreal Expos.

Al Oliver was one of baseball’s most dangerous hitters in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Oliver was a 7-time All-Star, a 3 time Silver Slugger award winner, and the 1982 National League batting champion. During Oliver’s career from 1968 to 1985, only Pete Rose and Rod Carew had more hits than he did. Oliver finished his career with 2,743 hits and a .303 lifetime batting average. So why was he dumped from the Hall of Fame ballot after failing to win 5% of the vote in his first year on the ballot? Good question. I think Al Oliver deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, and I think he’s one of the most underrated players in recent baseball history. 

Al Oliver just published an autobiography in September called Life Is a Hit; Don’t Strike Out: The Al Oliver Story. Oliver published an earlier autobiography in 1997 called Baseball’s Best Kept Secret: Al Oliver and His Time in Baseball, written with co-author Andrew O’Toole. Both books shed light on the man off of the baseball diamond. Baseball’s Best Kept Secret is the better book, as Oliver goes into much more detail about his playing career. If you’re reading Life Is a Hit without having read Baseball’s Best Kept Secret, you will be missing a lot of information. Unfortunately, just reading the books will be more work than it should be, as it is painfully obvious that neither book was professionally proof-read. Grammatical errors abound, and co-author Andrew O'Toole has an interesting interpretation of correct comma usage. That being said, if you can overlook the sloppy mistakes, the books offer a look at an interesting athlete. 

One thing that makes Baseball's Best Kept Secret interesting is that Oliver and O'Toole include other voices in the book-there are interviews with Oliver's teammates, sportswriters who covered the teams he played for, and excerpts from contemporary news articles about him. Not all of these other voices are complimentary to Oliver, and some of them quite pointedly criticize him. I applaud Al Oliver for including these other voices, and for not just creating an echo chamber of "Al Oliver should be a Hall of Famer." Oliver does the same thing in Life Is a Hit, sometimes enlisting some of the very same people quoted in Baseball’s Best Kept Secret. The problem is that most of the voices in Life Is a Hit do blur together, as they repeat the same thing: “Al Oliver should be a Hall of Famer.” Oh well, I can’t blame Oliver for wanting to be in the Hall.

Oliver grew up in Portsmouth, Ohio, where he played baseball and basketball against another future All-Star, Larry Hisle. Oliver dealt with tragedy early on, as his mother died of a heart attack when he was 13, and his father died on the same day that Oliver was called up to the major leagues. Oliver makes it clear in both books that his parents’ influence on him made him the man he was.

Signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates out of high school in 1964, Oliver quickly moved up the minor league ranks to earn a September call up in 1968. Oliver would never return to the minor leagues. A superbly gifted line drive hitter, Oliver could hit the ball hard to all fields. Oliver was a first baseman in high school and the minor leagues, but with the Pirates he alternated between first base and the outfield. In 1971, Oliver played a majority of his games in center field, where he was flanked by Hall of Famers Willie Stargell in left field and Roberto Clemente in right field. The outfield of Stargell, Oliver, and Clemente generated a lot of offense for the Pirates that year, as they beat the Orioles in the World Series. Late in the 1971 season, Oliver made history as he was part of the first all African-American and Latin starting lineup. Oliver blossomed as a hitter as the 1970’s went on, and beginning in 1972, he batted .300 or more in 11 of the last 14 years of his career. Traded to the Texas Rangers after the 1977 season, Oliver thrived in the hot Texas summers, batting .319 over 4 years with the Rangers. He had one of his finest seasons at the plate in 1980, getting over 200 hits for the first time in his career, and also hitting 19 home runs, which helped him finish the season with 117 RBI. During spring training in 1982, Oliver was traded to the Montreal Expos. He responded with his best season, as he led the NL in hits, doubles, RBI, batting average, and total bases. Oliver hit .331, the highest average of his career, and he finished in 3^rd place in the MVP voting. During his last two years in baseball, 1984 and 1985, Oliver bounced from team to team, as he spent time with the Giants, Phillies, Dodgers, and Blue Jays. He was one of many veteran players who were not offered a contract for the 1986 season because of collusion among baseball’s owners. 

The collusion scandal started because baseball’s owners were annoyed at the high salaries free agency had brought. They retaliated by illegally colluding with each other to not offer contracts to free agents and to coordinate their offers to free agents in an attempt to keep salaries down. Two of the most famous cases of collusion were against Tim Raines and Andre Dawson, both of the Montreal Expos. After the 1986 season, Dawson and Raines were not offered contracts by any teams, despite the fact that they were two of the best players in baseball. Raines had just won a batting title, and yet he received no offers until the Expos finally re-signed him on May 1^st, a month into the 1987 season. When no one offered Dawson a contract, he and his agent wrote a blank check to the Chicago Cubs and told them Dawson would play for them for any amount they would offer. Dawson ended up being the NL MVP in 1987 for the Cubs. 

Throughout his career, Al Oliver was regarded by the press as an overly confident braggart. Al's response to that was his great quote: "There's no such thing as bragging. You're either lying or telling the truth." Oliver always felt he was telling the truth about his abilities on the baseball diamond, even when that truth was predicting every day that he would get 4 or 5 hits. In his two books, Oliver shows us where that self-confidence and relentlessly positive attitude came from. Al Oliver was an African-American man who was raised by his parents to be very proud to be an African-American. When Oliver came to the major leagues in 1968, this was a rarity in the pro sports world. Oliver was not a militant, but as far as major league baseball was concerned, he might as well have been leading protest marches in the outfield. Oliver and other outspoken African-American baseball players of the 1970’s like Dick Allen, Reggie Jackson, and Oliver's teammate Dock Ellis would feel the brunt of white baseball writers' casual racism. 

One of the key passages in Baseball’s Best Kept Secret is a conversation that Oliver had early in his career with Roberto Clemente about the press. Oliver quotes Clemente saying to him, “They did it to me at the start of my career; the writers will give you a personality that they perceive.” (p.72) Baseball writers had decided early on in Clemente’s career that he was a hypochondriac who didn’t always give 100%. That label would dog Clemente his entire career. Likewise, Oliver was portrayed as arrogant, when he thought he was simply expressing confidence in his abilities. In both books, Oliver comes off as an affable, likeable man who was a quiet leader on his teams through his positive attitude and his generosity towards his fellow players.

Oliver was one of baseball’s steadiest hitters during his career, and he put up some really great numbers. Baseball’s Best Kept Secret lists where Oliver ranks in several categories during his career from 1968-1985. But since Oliver only played in 4 games in 1968 and collected just 1 hit, it’s a little more fair to Oliver to look at his stats from 1969-1985. 

Most Hits 1969-1985:

Pete Rose-3,095

Rod Carew-2,777

Al Oliver-2,742

Most Doubles 1969-1985:

Pete Rose-553

Al Oliver-529

Most RBIs 1969-1985:

Reggie Jackson-1,521

Tony Perez-1,342

Al Oliver-1,326

Johnny Bench-1,288

That’s very impressive company to keep. And while some might disregard those stats as just being cherry-picked to highlight Oliver’s career, the fact that the time span of those stats is 17 seasons makes the point that over 17 seasons Al Oliver was one of the best hitters in baseball. 

The Veterans' Committee for the Hall of Fame has put Oliver on their ballot in the past, and he deserves to be considered for election to the Hall of Fame. Oliver had a very similar career to another one of my favorite overlooked players, Vada Pinson. I’ve written about Pinson before, and I was excited to read in Baseball’s Best Kept Secret that Pinson was one of Oliver’s favorite players when he was growing up. For whatever reason, neither Oliver nor Pinson drew much support from the sportswriters who vote for the Hall of Fame. Oliver dropped off the ballot in his first year, and Pinson’s vote total never exceeded 16%, far short of the 75% of the vote needed for induction. Oliver and Pinson had similar skills; they were both hitters who slashed line drives all over the field and didn’t walk or strike out much. Because they didn’t walk much, their Hall of Fame candidacies have never gained much traction with the sabermetric writers. On the flip side, Pinson and Oliver have not had a lot of support from old school baseball writers either. There aren’t many people making the case for them, which is hurting future consideration of their candidacies. As the cases of Bert Blyleven and Jack Morris have shown, having a debate about a player’s stats is a vital part of getting into the Hall of Fame. While Blyleven is now in the Hall, and Morris fell just short, both players gained tons of votes because writers debated about them for years, even though their numbers hadn’t changed. But because no sabermetric writers are pushing for Pinson and Oliver based on recently developed stats like WAR and VORP, and no old school scribes are banging out stories about what great clutch hitters they were, they remain two of the best players not in the Hall of Fame.