Dave Parker, the slugging outfielder nicknamed the Cobra who won a pair of National League batting championships, helped propel the Pittsburgh Pirates to the 1979 World Series championship and was belatedly elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame late last year, died on Saturday in Cincinnati. He was 74.
He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2012. The Pirates confirmed Parker’s death on social media.
At 6 feet 5 inches and about 230 pounds, Parker was a feared left-handed batter, hitting 339 home runs, driving in 1,493 runs and collecting 2,712 hits in his 19 major league seasons. He was a seven-time All-Star and displayed a rocket arm in right field, winning three Gold Glove awards.
In September 1985, while playing for the Cincinnati Reds, Parker testified in federal court in Pittsburgh that while a Pirate he arranged cocaine transactions between a Pittsburgh man and some of his teammates, along with some players for the Houston Astros and the Los Angeles Dodgers. He said he used cocaine from 1976 to 1982.
“I stopped using in the late part of ’82,” Parker testified under a grant of immunity from prosecution. “I felt my game was slipping and I feel it played some part in it.”
In his 15 years on the sportswriters’ ballot for the Hall of Fame, which requires 75 percent of the votes for induction, Parker never received more than 24.5 percent of the votes.
He subsequently missed out three times in balloting by veterans committees that consider outstanding players whose eligibility on the writers’ ballots had expired. But last December, he was finally elected when he was named on 14 of the 16 ballots of the Classic Baseball Era Committee, surpassing the necessary 75 percent threshold.
Dick Allen, who played first base for the Phillies, was elected by the same committee, receiving 13 votes.
In a Zoom conference with reporters after his election was announced, Parker was asked if he had envisioned himself as a Hall of Famer.
“Without a doubt,” he said. “‘When the leaves turned brown, I’d be wearing the batting crown.’ That was one of my sayings, so I always thought that I was going to be a major leaguer. I told my mother at 8 years old that I would be a baseball star and one day buy her a house. Well, I did that in ’78. I got that done.”
Parker and Allen, who died in 2020, will be inducted into the Hall of Fame on July 27 during the annual ceremony in Cooperstown, N.Y. They will be joined by Ichiro Suzuki, Billy Wagner and CC Sabathia, who were elected by the writers.
In a tribute to Parker, Jane Clark Forbes, chairwoman of the Hall of Fame, said, “His legacy will be one of courage and leadership, matched only by his outstanding accomplishments on the field.”
Parker’s physique was matched by his outsize personality.
He teased his teammates in the clubhouse, loudly insisted they play hard, wore a diamond stud in his left ear and adorned his neck with chains. He was known as the Cobra for his bat-waving while awaiting a pitch and his quick swing.
“About 95 percent of the verbalizing in the clubhouse is done by me,” Parker told The New York Times in 1980. “I can challenge anybody and get away with it. I’m a big part of the offensive attack of this club and its main motivator. They say I’m the Ali of baseball. That puts a lot of pressure on me, but I’ll take it.”
“You hear him screaming, slamming his bat,” Harding Peterson, the vice president of the Pirates, said at the time. “People sometimes think he’s a tough guy with a big mouth, shooting it off. They get the wrong impression. If I was in a war, I’d share a foxhole with Dave Parker. He’s not going to fall asleep or run off when the going gets tough.”
Parker signed a five-year contract, baseball’s most lucrative deal at the time, before the 1979 season, when he was coming off his second consecutive batting title and the M.V.P. award. It was valued at between $1 million and $2 million a year, depending on bonuses and inflation, according to The Times.
He teamed with the future Hall of Fame first baseman Willie Stargell in leading the “We Are Family” Pirates, who adopted the Sister Sledge disco hit as their anthem, to the 1979 National League pennant and a seven-game World Series triumph over the Baltimore Orioles.
But Parker had a chronically sore left knee, leaving his long-term outlook uncertain, and Pittsburgh was a blue-collar city whose workers were concerned about their own future, so Pirates fans were regarded as hardly thrilled at the size of his contract.
Parker reported receiving hate mail and said that the tires on his two Mercedes were slashed.
During the first game of a July 1980 doubleheader at Three Rivers Stadium when Willie Stargell Day was celebrated, a fan threw a 9-volt battery at Parker during the eighth inning of the opener, narrowly missing his head, while he stood in right field.
He took himself out of the game and soon afterward asked the Pirates to trade him, saying “I’ve reached the point of no return.”
The Pirates were not about to let him go, but after 11 years in Pittsburgh, his five-year deal having expired, Parker signed a free-agent contract with the Cincinnati Reds before the 1984 season. He was runner-up for the National League’s M.V.P. award, behind Willie McGee of the St. Louis Cardinals, in 1985.
Parker played for Oakland, mostly as a designated hitter, in 1988 and 1989, and drove in 97 runs in his second season with the A’s, when they swept the San Francisco Giants in the earthquake-interrupted 1989 World Series.
He later played for the Milwaukee Brewers, the California Angels and the Toronto Blue Jays, then retired after the 1991 season.
David Gene Parker was born on June 9, 1951, in Grenada, Miss., one of six children of Richard and Dannie Mae Parker. His family moved to Cincinnati when he was a child, and his father worked there for a company that manufactured valves.
Parker was a standout high school football player but a knee injury ended his hopes of playing in college. He was, however, a power-hitting catcher on the baseball team and the Pirates selected him in the 14th round of the 1970 amateur draft.
He made his debut with Pittsburgh in July 1973 and became an everyday player two years later.
Parker retired with a career batting average of .290. He led the National League in hits (215) with the 1977 Pirates, in runs batted in (125) with the 1985 Reds, in total bases three times and in doubles twice.
He was later a coach for the California Angels and the St. Louis Cardinals.
Parker’s survivors include his wife, Kellye Crockett Parker and six children.
After he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, Parker and his wife started the Dave Parker 39 Foundation (a reference to his jersey number) to raise funds for research into the disease.
“I didn’t know anything about the disease until I got it,” Parker told The Kansas City Star in 2019. “I went home and read about it, and decided to get involved.”
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