Dave Parker embodied the Negro Leagues. His swag, flair and ebullient demeanor on the baseball diamond conjured images of the showman that were as good and in many cases better that their white contemporaries. Prior to Jackie Robinson tearing down the sport’s racist color barrier, he made his Major League Baseball debut playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 17, 1947.
Parker would follow 26 years later, playing his first MLB game on July 12, 1973 with the Pittsburgh Pirates, when Black players were firmly entrenched as some of the game’s most revered stars and American icons – Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, Josh Gibson et al. Parker passed away last Saturday from complications of the dreaded Parkinson’s disease at the age of 74.
Dishearteningly, his transition to join the ancestors occurred 29 days before he now will be posthumously inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York on July 27. Parker’s election to the Hall of Fame last December by the institution’s Classic Era Committee was long overdue.
If Hall of Fame voters had employed the simple measure of worthiness and elected Parker years ago –– the man affectionately known as the Cobra –– he would have heard the tributes, witnessed the bust of his likeness with those of the aforementioned Black Hall of Famers in the awe-inspiring upstate baseball museum, and heard the acceptance speech that will be delivered by his son.
In his classic brash style, Parker rightly asked “Why did it take so long?” when informed in December he had finally been elected. Parker, who was born on June 9, 1951 in Grenada, Mississippi and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, essentially replacing the incomparable Roberto Clemente as the Pirates’ right fielder after Clemente tragically died in an airplane accident on New Year’s Eve in 1972 and inconceivably never received more than 24% of votes in his 15 years on the Baseball Writers’ Association of America ballot.
To be elected candidates, one must be named on at least 75% of the ballots. Parker was eventually removed from consideration in 2011 as per the BBWAA’S eligibility rules. Over his 19-year career playing for six teams, most with the Pirates (1973-1983), the imposing 6-5, 230 pound Parker was a seven-time All-Star, 1978 National League MVP, two-time World Series champion in 1979 with the Pirates and 1989 with the Oakland A’s, two-time batting champion and three-time Gold Glove winner.
He once rhymed, using a colloquial pronunciation of the number four, “The sun is going to shine, the wind is going to blow, and Dave is going to go 4-for-4.”
The sun will forever shine on the sterling Dave Parker!