2025 Classic Baseball Era Committee Candidate: Dave Parker

The following article is part of a series concerning the 2025 Classic Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering long-retired players, managers, executives, and umpires whose candidacies will be voted upon on December 8. For an introduction to the ballot, see here, and for an introduction to JAWS, see here. Several profiles in this series are adapted from work previously published at SI.com, Baseball Prospectus, and Futility Infielder. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

A five-tool player whose power, ability to hit for average, and strong, accurate throwing arm all stood out – particularly in the Pirates’ seemingly endless and always eye-catching assortment of black-and-yellow uniform combinations — Dave Parker was once considered the game’s best all-around player. In his first five full seasons (1975-79), he amassed a World Series ring, regular season and All-Star MVP awards, two batting titles, two league leads in slugging percentage, and three Gold Gloves, not to mention tremendous swagger, a great nickname (“The Cobra”), and a high regard for himself.

“Take Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente and match their first five years up against mine, and they don’t compare with me,” he told Roy Blount in a 1979 Sports Illustrated cover story.

Parker, who debuted with the Pirates in July 1973, just seven months after Clemente’s death, and assumed full-time duty as the team’s right fielder a season and a half later, once appeared to be on course to join the Puerto Rican legend in Cooperstown. Unfortunately, cocaine, poor conditioning, and injuries threw him off course, and while he recovered well enough to make three All-Star teams, play a supporting role on another World Series winner, and accrue hefty career totals while playing past the age of 40, his game lost multiple dimensions along the way. Hall of Fame voters greeted his case with a yawn; he debuted with just 17.5% on the 1997 ballot and peaked at 24.5% the next year, and while he remained eligible for the full 15 seasons, only one other time did he top 20%. Since then, he’s made appearances on three other Era Committee ballots, namely the 2014 Expansion Era one as well as the ’18 and ’20 Modern Baseball ones, but even after going public with his diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease, lending an air of pathos to his situation, he hasn’t come close to election.

David Gene Parker was born in Grenada, Mississippi on June 9, 1951, one of six children of Richard and Dannie Mae Parker. His father worked as a shipping clerk in a foundry, while his mother worked as a maid; both of his parents had some raw athleticism. “My mother had a cannon for an arm, threw all sort of things at us – shoes, books, whatever – and usually connected,” Parker said in 2014. “My dad never got to play organized ball. But he’d crush that ball. He could have been something, if he’d gotten the chance. He hit cross-handed. And he could run like a scalded rabbit. He beat me in a footrace one day after work – in his work boots, carrying his lunch bucket.”

In Cincinnati, Parker grew up less than a block from Crosley Field, home of the Reds. He and his friends would sneak into games and cheer for stars such as Frank Robinson, Vada Pinson, and Pete Rose. At age 15, he began working as a vendor at Crosley Field, selling hot dogs and popcorn, and, circa 1968–69, dreamed of becoming the next Johnny Bench, as he was the starting catcher (and occasional pitcher) for Courier Tech High School’s team. He also starred in basketball and football, and was heavily recruited as a running back until he injured his left knee in the first game of his senior season. He tried to play through the injury but ended up undergoing multiple surgeries, and missed his senior season of baseball. Per Blount, it wasn’t his knee injury but concerns about his ability to hit the ball in the air and a history of clashing with coaches that let to his being chosen in the 14th round by the Pirates in 1970, instead of the first or second. It was a dreadful draft for the Pirates, who signed just one of their other 58 picks, yet lowballed Parker into accepting a mere $6,000 for a bonus.

Between Parker’s knee problems and his size — he was on his way to becoming 6-foot-5 and 225 pounds as a young major leaguer — the Pirates decided he had no future behind the plate and instead moved him to the outfield. Beginning in spring training 1971, the dawn of the fabled Pittsburgh Lumber Company, Parker picked up the finer points of the game from Clemente, Willie Stargell, and coach (and later manager) Bill Virdon. Aside from a rough 30-game stint at Double-A Waterbury, where he started the 1971 season at age 19, he hit at every minor league stop, earning MVP honors both in the Gulf Coast League in ’70 and the Carolina League in ’72. He hit 22 homers and stole 38 bases the latter year while batting .310/.350/.516.

Parker was tearing up the International League (.317/.356/.515) through the first half of the 1973 season when he got called up to replace outfielder Gene Clines, who tore ligaments in his right ankle. He debuted in the majors on July 12, 1973, barely a month past his 22nd birthday, going 0-for-4 out of the leadoff spot against the Padres’ Clay Kirby. He spent the remainder of that season and all of the next one (during which he lost more than two months to a hamstring injury) in a platoon role, making just three starts against lefties. Deep in young outfielders, the Pirates moved Stargell to full-time first base duty in 1975, with incumbent right fielder Richie Zisk shifting to left, opening up the full-time right field job for Parker.

The results were revelatory. The 24-year-old Parker hit .308/.357/.541 with 25 homers and 101 RBI; his slugging percentage led the league, his 149 OPS+ ranked third, his 6.3 WAR (including defense that was a league-best 15 runs above average according to Total Zone) fifth. The Pirates won the NL East for the second straight season, but bowed to the Reds in the NLCS; Parker went 0-for-10, only reaching base on a walk and a hit-by-pitch. After the season, he edged out both Bench and Rose to place third in the NL MVP voting behind Joe Morgan and Greg Luzinski.

Though he slipped to 13 homers and a .475 slugging percentage in 1976, Parker’s performance was still more than solid (133 OPS+, 3.7 WAR). He started 1977 so hot that he was hitting above .400 as late as May 14 (.408), and as high as .349 in early September; he finished at .338/.397/.531, beating out teammate Rennie Stennett for the NL batting title, ranking first in both hits (215) and doubles (44), third in WAR (7.4), fifth in OPS+ (145) and on-base percentage, and sixth in slugging percentage. He made his first All-Star team, won his first Gold Glove, and again finished third in the MVP voting, this time behind George Foster and Luzinski.

“The Cobra” — a nickname given to him by Pirates trainer Tony Bartirome — developed into such an intimidating hitter that opposing pitchers intentionally walked him a league-high 23 times in 1978. He had more help from Bartirome that season. In a home plate collision with Mets catcher (and former college football player) John Stearns on June 30, Parker was not only thrown out to end the game but suffered a fractured jaw and cheekbone, as well as a concussion, though he only realized the latter years later. “That was like the Pennsylvania Railroad colliding with the B&O,” said Pirates manager Chuck Tanner. When Parker returned to action on July 16, he was wearing a two-toned hockey goalie’s mask that Bartirome had customized, then with the help of the Steelers’ equipment manager — the two teams shared Three Rivers Stadium — switched to a football face mask, which he wore while running the bases. It set off a trend among similarly injured players, and scared the living hell out of Morgan, who threatened to sue if he sustained injury in the event of the two players colliding at second base.

Despite the injury, Parker hit .334/.394/.585 en route to another batting title and slugging percentage crown; he was second in on-base percentage, but 36 points behind league leader Jeff Burroughs. He reached 30 homers for the first time, a total that ranked third in the league, and both his 166 OPS+ and 7.0 WAR led the circuit as well. In January 1979, just before he began what otherwise would have been his walk year, he signed a five-year contract that was widely reported to be worth at least $5 million, making him the game’s first million dollar a year player, though the deal included something closer to $2.1 million in current salary and $5.3 million in deferred compensation, the payment of which the Pirates would later challenge.

Though his numbers fell off slightly in 1979 (.310/.380/.526, 141 OPS+, 25 HR), Parker enjoyed another exceptional season, ranking fourth in the NL with 6.7 WAR. He won All-Star Game MVP honors thanks to a game-tying sacrifice fly and two spectacular outfield assists in the late innings of the NL’s 7-6 win. In the seventh, with the AL leading 6-5, Parker lost track of a Jim Rice fly ball against the Kingdome roof, but recovered to throw a perfect one-hopper to Ron Cey at third base, cutting down Rice trying to stretch a double into a triple.

Then, with the score tied in the bottom of the eighth, Parker threw out Brian Downing trying to score from second on a Graig Nettles single, positioning his throw such that catcher Gary Carter just dropped his tag on Downing’s head like an anvil. Forty-five (!) years later, I still get goosebumps watching this one.

With Parker and Stargell (who would share MVP honors with Keith Hernandez) leading the way, the “We Are Family” Pirates won 98 games, then swept Morgan, Foster, and the Reds in the NLCS; Parker singled in the winning run in the 10th inning of Game 2. Though hampered by a late-season left knee injury that limited his ability to pull the ball, he went 10-for-29 in the World Series as the Pirates came back from a three-games-to-one deficit to beat the Orioles in seven games. Parker made a crucial catch of an Eddie Murray fly ball with the bases loaded in the eighth inning of Game 7. “He hit a line drive to me, a carrying line drive,” said Parker in 2014. “I broke to my glove side, slipped, and almost fell. I recovered and managed to catch it. If I don’t catch that ball, I’d have kept running right through the fence and on out into Baltimore somewhere.”

To this point, Parker was rightly regarded among the game’s elite. His 31.1 WAR from 1975-79 ranked fourth in the majors, trailing only Mike Schmidt (38.7), George Brett (35.0), and Rod Carew (31.9), while his 21.1 WAR from ’77-79 trailed only Schmidt (23.0) and Brett (21.6). But even with the batting title and the championship, Parker’s million-dollar status made him the target of criticism and even racist hate mail. Embittered, he skipped the World Series parade. “At the time I felt the fans weren’t there for me, so why should I’ve been there for them,” Parker told The Undefeated’s Branson Wright in 2018. “I didn’t feel I had to apologize for being successful, but it appeared that’s what some fans wanted me to do.”

Continued trouble with his left knee in 1980 caused Parker’s production to plummet to 17 homers, 79 RBI, a 115 OPS+, and just 1.6 WAR in 138 games. In September, the New York Times‘ Jane Gross wrote that he “looked like a lame horse on the base paths.” Fans at Three Rivers Stadium literally targeted him, throwing 9-volt batteries and other objects in his direction in right field. After a battery whizzed by his head during a July 20 contest, he removed himself from the game. “There have been five incidents in Pittsburgh where I could have been seriously hurt. If I’m going to get hurt, I’ll get hurt playing the game, not by someone who has a grudge,” he told reporters. He asked for a trade, though he later cooled down. Meanwhile, his common-law wife sued him for divorce.

After the 1980 season, Parker had surgery to remove torn cartilage in his left knee, but the injury bug kept biting. Achilles and thumb injuries as well as the players’ strike limited him to just 140 games, 15 homers, and 0.7 WAR in 1981–82, and his weight ballooned; some estimated it as high as 260 pounds, though Parker disputed that figure. He managed just 12 homers, a 97 OPS+ and 0.2 WAR in his 144 games in 1983, even with a .305/.331/.458 showing in the second half. In September, after he dodged another battery at Three Rivers, a UPI article reported that among the projectiles hurled at him since signing his contract were “a bat, a steel valve and a five-pound sack of nuts and bolts.” Yikes.

A free agent after the season, Parker went home, signing a two-year deal with the Reds, one that paid him $800,000 per year — a pay cut, going by the perception of his million-dollar status. Remarkably the team that had let Rose, Morgan, and Tony Perez depart when their contracts expired had never landed a major free agent before. While he only improved slightly in 1984, (104 OPS+, 1.0 WAR), his 94 RBI (up from 69 the year before) fed the perception of a stronger rebound, and the Reds inked him to a three-year, $3.325 million extension.

On the field, Parker’s 1985 was his best season after ’79 (34 homers, a league-high 125 RBI, .312/.365/.551 line, and 4.7 WAR); he made his fifth All-Star team (and first since ’81), won the first All-Star Game Home Run Derby, and finished second behind Willie McGee in the NL MVP voting. Off the field was a nightmare. Called to testify in the 1985 Pittsburgh drug trials, he admitted to having used cocaine as early as 1976 and “with consistency” from ’79 until late ’82, when he realized it had eroded his play. “I was going downhill,” he testified. Though he had been granted immunity from prosecution, he received a one-year suspension from commissioner Peter Ueberroth, waived on the condition of submitting to drug testing for the remainder of his career, performing 200 hours of community service, and contributing 10% of his salary to programs to combat drug abuse. The Pirates filed suit in an attempt to avoid paying him his deferred salary because his cocaine use “negatively affected his ability to perform.” In 1988, the two sides reached settlement for “a substantial lump sum” instead of deferred payments.

In retrospect, Parker said that his contract — which happened against a backdrop of steel mill closures that had hit the Pittsburgh area hard — was a burden. As he told The Undefeated, “Being the first [to make a million per year] and being a black guy didn’t make it that much easier, and some fans turning against me didn’t make me feel too good. And making that kind of money wasn’t a good fit for nobody involved. The fans weren’t having it, and I wasn’t having it from my end as well.”

Thankfully, by the time he was in Cincinnati, Parker had cleaned himself up and was able to enjoy his elder statesman role while continuing his career. Though he hit 31 homers and drove in 116 runs while making another All-Star team in 1986, he declined from a 149 OPS+ to 117 as well as from +5 runs (via Total Zone) to -17; his WAR plummeted to 0.3. While he would reach 20 homers three more times and 90 RBI twice over his age 36-40 seasons — even making his seventh and final All-Star team in 1990 with a 21-homer, 92-RBI season as the Brewers’ full-time DH — the truly productive phase of his career was over. He did play for two pennant winners and one championship team while serving as the A’s DH in 1988–89, homering three times in the latter postseason, and was valued as a clubhouse leader, but his 92 homers and 400 RBI for the Reds (1987), A’s, Brewers, Angels and Blue Jays (both ’91) during this stretch amounted to a combined OPS+ of 101 and a net of -0.7 WAR, with a high of 1.1 for that Milwaukee season.

Because of his longevity, Parker finished with impressive counting stats, though it’s not hard to imagine that had he steered clear of cocaine and taken better care of himself, he might well have reached 3,000 hits, and possibly 400 homers as well. Given his collection of accomplishments, he scores a 125 on the Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor, which measures how likely (but not how deserving) a player is to be elected by awarding points for various honors, league leads, postseason performance and so on — the things that tend to catch voters’ eyes. A score of 100 is “a good possibility,” while 130 suggests “a virtual cinch.” BBWAA voters were not particularly moved by his case; he did spend the full 15 years on the ballot, but never received even one-third of the support he needed for election.

Parker hasn’t fared a whole lot better on Era Committee ballots, all of which have taken place against the backdrop of his ongoing battle with Parkinson’s disease, a sobering sight. On the 2014 and ’18 ballots, he didn’t receive enough support to have his actual vote total announced; customarily, the Hall lumps together all of the candidates below a certain (varying) threshold as “receiving fewer than x” votes to avoid embarrassing them (or their descendants) with the news of a shutout. On the 2020 ballot, he received 43.8% of the vote, more than Steve Garvey (37.5%) but less than Dwight Evans (50%); the former is on this ballot but the latter has been classified as belonging to the Contemporary Baseball Era.

From an advanced statistical standpoint, Parker suffers not only due to that low-value stretch at the end of his career (hardly uncommon) but because of his weak half-decade in the middle. From 1980–84, his age-29 through age-33 seasons, he netted just 3.4 WAR while posting a modest 106 OPS+. He totaled just 7.7 WAR from age 29 onward, even while hitting 217 homers and collecting 1,668 hits, more than half his total.

The sum of Parker’s case is not unlike that of Dale Murphy’s, for as different as the two were off the field — and you can’t get much further apart than the distance between Parker’s swagger and misadventures and Murphy’s wholesome, milk-drinking persona. Both finished with a 121 OPS+ and have seven-year WAR peaks within hailing distance of the standards at their respective positions; Murphy (41.2) is 3.5 wins below the mark for center fielders while ranking 18th, Parker (37.4) 5.0 below that for right fielders while tying with Evans and Brian Giles for 30th. Neither Murphy or Parker produced much value outside of those peaks, however, and as a result, they’re much further away from the standards when it comes to career WAR and JAWS; Murphy ranks 27th in the latter, 14.4 points below the standard, while Parker is 41st, 17.9 points below the standard. The drastic fall-off of the latter’s defense, from +40 runs from 1973–79 to -61 for the remainder of his career, and then the positional adjustment hit for shifting to DH, accounts for the main discrepancy between the two players.

They’re both clearly better than 2019 Today’s Game honoree Harold Baines, whose longer stretch at DH puts his 30.1 JAWS 78th among right fielders. But even given the time he spent at the center of the baseball world, it’s hard to justify including Parker on a ballot where he’s got the second-largest gap between his JAWS and the standard at his position, while four candidates much closer to the mark (Dick Allen, Ken Boyer, Luis Tiant, and Tommy John) are vying for the ballot’s three precious slots along with two Negro Leagues stars, Vic Harris and John Donaldson.

We can be glad that Parker got his life in order, that he’s taken a prominent role in raising money for the fight against Parkinson’s, and that he’s receiving an outpouring of sympathy and attention for his plight. But that doesn’t mean that his road has to end in Cooperstown, and I don’t expect we’ll see him wind up there on this ballot.

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