The Pittsburgh Pirates celebrated Dave Parker’s Hall of Fame induction weekend in appropriate fashion, wearing all-black throwback uniforms, caps with Stargell stars and a circular patch to honor the Cobra.
After waiting three decades to be elected, Parker received a call in December that the Pirates believed was long overdue. Sadly, Parker died at age 74 from complications of Parkinson’s disease June 28, a mere month before his enshrinement into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
That makes Sunday’s induction ceremony a bittersweet moment for his “We Are Family” teammates, who believed Parker should have been honored with a plaque in Cooperstown, N.Y., long ago.
“I’m just glad that he did find out that he was going in,” said Al Oliver, an outfielder/first baseman who played for the Pirates from 1968-77 and will be inducted into their Hall of Fame on Aug. 22. “For me, it’s kind of hard to swallow, mainly because he’s a friend of mine. The Hall of Fame needs to get on the ball. They’re putting Hall of Famers in there when they can’t enjoy it, when they’re in their 70s and 80s. It doesn’t take that long to figure out whether someone is a Hall of Famer.”
Kent Tekulve, the former Pirates closer, believes baseball fans were deprived of Parker delivering an unforgettable acceptance speech. Instead, Parker’s son, David II, will read the words his father wrote when he realized that he wouldn’t be able to attend in person.
“It’s going to be tough for young David because he’s never going to be able to deliver it like his dad in his prime,” Tekulve said. “There would have been humor and cutting on people laced through it. I’m disappointed that the world is getting cheated of hearing something from Dave Parker that we got to hear every day in the clubhouse.”
Parker was a 6-foot-5, 230-pound right fielder who blended charisma and five-tool talent as a heart-and-soul star of their 1979 World Series champions. And he did so with a swashbuckling style.
Nothing was as cool as the photos of Parker pulling a drag on a heater in the dugout or wearing a Panama hat with a black T-shirt that read, “If you hear any noise, it’s just me and the boys boppin’.”
Except for watching Parker play with the same flair on a daily basis.
Not only was Parker full of bravado but had a way of backing up the boasts he made loudly and proudly, often in the center of the clubhouse. Tekulve recalled how Parker was at his boisterous best before the 1977 season, claiming that when the leaves turned brown, he would be wearing the batting crown.
Sure enough, Parker led the National League with a .338 batting average. Parker arrived at spring training the following year, predicting a repeat. This time, he hit .334, which led the major leagues. When Parker batted .310 to finish seventh in the NL in 1979, his teammates couldn’t wait to give him grief at Pirate City in Bradenton, Fla.
“We went over very casually to his locker and were standing around, and, all of a sudden, somebody started it and we all chimed in, ‘When the leaves turned brown, Dave Parker had to give up his batting crown,’ ” Tekulve reminisced. “We were waiting three years to do this. Dave doesn’t miss a beat. He says, ‘You’re right. I thought it was selfish, so I decided to make you 24 bums world champions.’
“Everybody loses it when he comes up with those lines. We knew how he was working this. He puts lines out there that were so ridiculous that he put expectations on himself. He took more pride in that, the fact that nobody could say anything to him was more of a marquee thing than him actually winning the batting titles.”
Parker was a seven-time All-Star who won the back-to-back batting titles, three Gold Gloves, three Silver Sluggers, a Home Run Derby, an All-Star Game MVP, the 1978 NL MVP and two World Series titles — the latter coming with the Oakland Athletics in 1989 — in 19 major-league seasons. And he did so with swagger, from slapping his glove off his left leg before snatching fly balls to hitting line-drive lasers.
“He was one of the best players I ever saw,” Oliver said. “The thing I liked about him is his confidence factor. That’s what made him. He was a winner, and he couldn’t wait to compete. That’s the one word: confidence. All great players have confidence, but he was super confident. That’s what made him, no question. He never doubted his ability at all, never that I saw. That’s why he was able to do the things that he did. Whether it was in the clubhouse or whatever, he always had something funny to say. That’s the thing that will always stand out about Dave. He was always just confident. Not too many people you find that are confident all the time.”
Tekulve noted that Parker also played all the time, averaging 148 games a season between 1975-80 despite enduring bad knees and numerous home-plate collisions, including one with New York Mets catcher John Stearns that left Parker with a fractured jaw and cheekbone in June 1978.
“He won most of them, but they still hurt,” Tekulve said. “The one he did lose to John Stearns, Dave Parker being Dave Parker, he doesn’t take a day off. He goes out and plays with the hockey mask on. That translated to the rest of us. If he was doing it, we owed it to him to do it, too. That’s where the ‘We Are Family’ mentality came from.”
For as much debate as there is that Parker’s involvement in the Pittsburgh drug trials in the early 1980s was the black eye that kept him out of the Hall or that his career numbers — 2,712 hits, 339 home runs and a .290 batting average — fell short of its benchmarks, it’s almost as if he was punished for being a five-tool talent instead of a one-trick pony.
The batting crowns proved Parker could hit for average. The speed on the basepaths was evident in his 526 doubles, which rank 46th all-time, 75 triples and 154 stolen bases. He flashed his power with the homers and 1,493 RBIs, which rank 58th all-time. And he possessed a rifle for a right arm, which he showcased by throwing ropes to get Jim Rice out at third base and Brian Downing at home plate in the 1979 All-Star Game.
Above all, Parker shined in a spotlight where most would shrink.
“Really, with Dave there was a sixth skill that doesn’t get talked about: That’s the ability to mentally handle being Roberto Clemente’s replacement,” Tekulve said of the legendary Pirates Hall of Fame right fielder, whose death in a plane crash on New Year’s Eve 1972 preceded Parker’s major-league debut by only six-and-a-half months.
“Great players come to the big leagues, and they’re better than the guy in front of them. Dave wasn’t. He was coming in behind Clemente as a young kid trying to prove himself, continually work on his skills and have that hang over his head, too. Everybody compared him to Clemente. There was not a step taken backward, from Clemente to Parker. As far as having to come and fill that void for your ballclub, he was thrown into it. When you have a kid who can be a superstar, you don’t want to put him in that position. When Clemente dies in the plane crash, they didn’t have a choice.”
As talented and tough as Parker was, it was his softer side that former Pirates center fielder Omar Moreno remembers fondly. Moreno met Parker when they played winter ball together for Magallanes in Venezuela. As a skinny teenager from Panama who didn’t speak English, Moreno appreciated how Parker and Hall of Fame first baseman Willie Stargell befriended him and took him under their wing. Parker was only two years older but would affectionately tell Moreno, “You are my son.”
“One of the things I admired most about Dave as a person was his incredible honesty and frankness,” Moreno said. “He’d tell you things as they were. He didn’t sugarcoat anything. He was truly authentic. As a player, he was one of the best I ever played baseball with.”
In retirement, Moreno invited Parker and his wife, Kellye, to Panama to join his Omar Moreno Foundation in conducting baseball clinics. That built a strong bond between the families to the point that Moreno’s daughter, Leury, refers to Parker as “Uncle Dave.” Moreno, who lives in Panama, spoke to Parker in his hometown of Cincinnati by phone in December, when his election to the Hall of Fame was announced.
“We both got emotional and cried,” Moreno said. “I felt that this honor should have happened many years ago, but I find satisfaction in knowing that he learned of it before he passed. I will always remember Dave as a great friend, a person who always treated me with respect and an incredibly professional player on the field.”
And an unforgettable member of the family off it.
Kevin Gorman is a TribLive reporter covering the Pirates. A Baldwin native and Penn State graduate, he joined the Trib in 1999 and has covered high school sports, Pitt football and basketball and was a sports columnist for 10 years. He can be reached at kgorman@triblive.com.
