COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. – David Parker II was six years old when his father played his final game in the majors. He learned of his career bit by bit, over time, mostly after high school.
“I’m still humbled, to this day, about things that my dad did,” he said in Cooperstown on Saturday. “I think it’s more fun to just learn about it as it comes. I didn’t go sit down and watch hours of my pops. I like to stop at Kroger or wherever I’m at and hear the stories about my dad. People think I get tired of it, and I say, ‘No, I like learning new things.’ Everybody has a new story.”
Now it is Parker’s task to synthesize those stories into a speech at the Hall of Fame. His father, Dave, will be inducted on Sunday, nearly a month after his death. Parker fought Parkinson’s disease for nearly 12 years and died on June 28 at age 74.
“The last year and a half, it kind of took a wrong turn,” Parker II said. “He knew that he was being inducted, but I’m gonna be honest: between me, my mother, and my family, we just didn’t think he was gonna be able to come through all the complications that he had to come (to Cooperstown). If he would have still been here, it would have been really hard for him to get here. But he knows he’s here.”
Hall of Fame president Josh Rawitch led a small group of staffers to Cincinnati in late April to meet with Parker and his wife, Kellye, at their home. They discussed plans for the summer and staged a private ceremony, of sorts, to give Parker some closure in his final months.
“We put on the Hall of Fame jersey and we gave him his Hall of Fame cap in Cincinnati, (and) he was very, very aware of what it meant,” Rawitch said. “You could see just how powerful that moment was. We’re all very grateful that he was able to experience all that before he passed.”
Parker and another posthumous inductee, Dick Allen, who died in 2020, will be honored Sunday with CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki and Billy Wagner. Allen’s widow, Willa, will give his speech, as Roy Halladay’s widow, Brandy, did for him when he was posthumously honored in 2019.
The Hall of Fame expects more than 50 members to attend Sunday’s ceremony, including players from each of Parker’s first five teams: Bert Blyleven (Pittsburgh Pirates), Dennis Eckersley (Oakland Athletics), Barry Larkin (Cincinnati Reds), Paul Molitor and Robin Yount (Milwaukee Brewers) and Dave Winfield (California Angels).
Parker hit .290 with 2,712 hits and 339 home runs in a career that stretched from 1973 to 1991. He won two batting titles, two World Series and was the 1978 National League Most Valuable Player. Parker was also the All-Star Game MVP in 1979 and won the first Home Run Derby six years later.
Dave Parker with the Pirates in 1978, the year he would win the National League Most Valuable Player award. (Getty Images)
Parker would joke that he had written his Hall of Fame speech many years ago, and while that wasn’t exactly true, he shared some themes he wanted to convey in the speech with David II. After the Classic Baseball Era committee elected Parker in December, he said he always considered himself a Hall of Famer, anyway. The long wait, Parker II said, was all part of the journey.
“The timing of it, I feel it’s right on time,” Parker II said. “You can’t rush anything. It could have happened a little bit sooner but we’re thankful for what happened because you can’t lie about his numbers. So as long as he’s there, I think that will put a smile on his face and ease his pain going home.”
Only two other Hall of Famers have died in the few months between election and induction: pitcher Eppa Rixey in February 1963 and another pitcher, Leon Day, in March 1995.
Day, a star in the Negro Leagues, was 78 when he got the news in a Baltimore hospital, He died six days later.
“I’m so happy, I don’t know what to do,” a tearful Day said, according to the Baltimore Sun. “I never thought it would come.”
Parker did. And now his namesake will represent him for a moment he always wanted.
(Top photo of Dave Parker II: AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
