PITTSBURGH -- One of the better compliments you can give when describing a player is that they are greater than the sum of their parts. That was the case for Dave Parker, impressive since those individual parts were some of the best of his era.
A cannon for an arm. A keen batting eye. Lightning-fast hands. And perhaps his greatest gift: his silver tongue, one that produced hits almost as quickly as his bat.
“When the leaves turn brown, I’ll be wearing the batting crown.”
“If you hear any noise, it’s just me and the boys boppin.”
“Three things are gonna happen today. Sun’s gonna shine, wind’s gonna blow, and big Dave is going 4-for-4.”
That last one was his closing remark to PNC Park faithful that September 2022 day where he was inducted into the inaugural Pirates Hall of Fame class. This July 27, he will finally be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, but the speech he had been holding onto for 15 years will have to be delivered by his son, David, after Parker passed away on June 28 after a lengthy battle with Parkinson’s disease.
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Much of the discussion around the man known as “The Cobra” the past decade centered around his battle with his disease and how so many of his peers believed he belonged in Cooperstown.
His list of accomplishments is certainly robust. 2,712 hits. 339 home runs. 1,493 RBIs. Seven All-Star nods. A trio of Silver Sluggers and Gold Gloves. Back-to-back National League batting championships in 1977 and 1978, including an NL MVP in the latter year. In Pittsburgh, he was the 1979 Fam-A-Lee’s older brother, serving as an important player for the World Series champs.
Those stats don’t even convey the memories that have bridged generations. His throws in the 1979 All-Star Game to get Jim Rice at third base and Brian Downing at home. Home runs against the Blue Jays in 1989 to help propel the Athletics to the pennant. The hometown kid who returned to Cincinnati and turned into a Reds Hall of Famer.
"He was probably Superman to a lot of people when he played,” fellow Pirates MVP outfielder Andrew McCutchen said.
That goes for his teammates, too. During a celebration of that 1979 team last year at PNC Park, the focus was almost as much on Parker as it was remembering the team as a whole.
There were stories of Parker buying a seafood spread for the team ahead of a World Series game (“It had to have been two, three thousand dollars of crab,” Mike Easler said), and an off-handed remark he made to rookie Steve Nicosia midseason that he was going to the World Series in his first year (Parker was right).
He wasn’t afraid to proclaim that he was going to wear the batting crown or go 4-for-4 that night, so what’s a World Series prediction amongst friends? Those bold claims started early, and he had a knack for backing up his talk.
“I told my mother at eight years old that I would be a baseball star and one day buy a house,” Parker said in his Hall of Fame Zoom call last December. “Well, I did that in '78.”
Confidence was a necessity, especially since he was following Roberto Clemente as the Pirates’ right fielder. As Steve Blass said to Parker during their induction into the Pirates Hall of Fame, “all they did was ask you to replace Roberto Clemente. All you did was take ownership of right field.”
It was a daunting challenge. Parker didn’t let it define him.
“Everybody was talking about me being the next Roberto Clemente. That wasn’t what I was trying to achieve,” Parker once told MLB Network. “I was trying to make my mark as the first Dave Parker.”
There was only one Dave Parker, which is part of the shame that he won’t be there to see it.
“I know he was sick. We all did,” Reds manager and former teammate Terry Francona said. “I wish he could have been in Cooperstown this summer to get his Hall of Fame plaque. I know how I felt about it. I can’t imagine how he would have.”
Still, the ceremony will still happen. Parker knew his speech was going to be delivered at Cooperstown, and he was finally recognized as part of baseball immortality.
“I was finally glad that justice was done,” longtime teammate John Candelaria told MLB.com the day after the announcement was made. “I wasn’t sure [it would happen], but I was hoping.”