The Resurrection of Dave Parker

[bernieh]

[i:22a3a88173]by Dave Nightingale
photo: Peter Travers
originally printed: The Sporting News, March 24, 1986[/i:22a3a88173]

[size=18:22a3a88173]Adversity, Says the Cincinnati Muscleman, Has Made Him Stronger[/size:22a3a88173]

<img src="http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/images/baseball/stratomatic/1986/story_photos/dave_parker_150x212.jpg" align="left" style="margin-right: 10px;" /> TAMPA - Several years ago, the Minnesota Vikings' Carl Eller ambled out of a football stadium carrying his valuables in a leather bag attached to his wrist.

"Nice looking purse," said a bystander.

The gigantic defensive lineman stopped abruptly and affixed the other man with what best could be described as a stern look.

"This is not a purse," he said. "lt is an outside wallet. And don't you ever forget it!"

That scenario came to mind one day during spring training in regard to another athlete whose physical presence is sufficiently intimidating so that when he says "spit," everybody stops to expectorate.

David Gene Parker walked into the Cincinnati Reds' spring training locker room clad in a pair of multi-hued, luminous Bermuda shorts.

The Reds greeted his attire with good-natured communal laughter. But the gibes were brief. To be sure, the players weren't actually intimidated by the presence of their celebrated teammate. But they didn't choose to belabor their opinion of his garb because... well, let's just say that it's very difficult to think of Parker as merely just another guy.

First, he is bigger than most baseball players - 240 pounds distributed over a 6-5 1/2" frame, a massive upper torso, thighs like telephone poles. He towers over those around him. David? Goliath would be more appropriate.

Second, he is more boisterous and usually more profane than his peers.

"Dave is misunderstood some of the time because he's so loud, but that's just because he has a real passion for people," said Reds Manager Pete Rose. "Actually, he's a very down-to-earth person."

Third, Parker is more talented than most - 1,850 hits, 216 homers, 977 runs batted in and a .304 average over the last dozen years.

And he certainly is more affluent than most major leaguers - with an average annual salary, from 1979 through 1986, of $1.468 million.

No, he's not an ordinary ball player.

And if, as Rose says, Parker is misunderstood by people in the game, then consider how difficult it is for outsiders to comprehend that he can be subject to the same problems as mere mortals.

Allowing himself to become down in the mouth and fat in the past are examples.

So is ingesting something other than fresh air through his nostrils.

Similarly, it's difficult for outsiders to think of Goliath in sympathetic terms - to try to understand that he, like most any other human being, seeks only to enjoy his job, to dodge adversity, to find happiness.

In other words, ball players have feelings, too.

All of Parker's money bought him magnificent houses and cars and, yes, cocaine. It did not necessarily buy him happiness.

"I have come to the reluctant conclusion that my having to digest a large annual dose of manure is very much a part of baseball," he said. "I do think that all of the adversity through the years has made me a much stronger individual. But from now on, it sure would be nice if l could avoid it.

"Hell, if I had just one season without any outside problems, I might hit .990."

Don't misunderstand. Parker isn't waving a crying towel toward the fans in the stands.

As the 34-year-old outfielder enters what he says are the final five years of his career, he does not seek sympathy for past problems.

But he would like to remind the fans, "I'm only a human being."

Parker didn't seem all that mortal to National League pitchers in 1985, his second season in Cincinnati - the city of his childhood, the home of his parents. He tattooed those pitchers for a .312 average, 34 homers and 125 runs batted in, the last two figures career highs.

But Parker's year may have been one of the quietest such campaigns in diamond annals. And it most assuredly was one of the strangest.

The reason for Parker's relative national anonymity in 1985 was that Rose dominated most of the Cincinnati-datelined stories during his successful quest to supplant Ty Cobb atop baseball's all-time hit parade.

"It didn't bother me to play in Pete's shadow, just as it didn't bother me to sometimes play in Willie Stargell's shadow at Pittsburgh," Parker said. "First, both are my friends. And second, my numbers are there for anybody to see.

"I've won batting titles and RBI titles. I've led the league in hits, and I have been named its Most Valuable Player. I've been the All-Star Game MVP. I hit .345 in a World Series. I can compete with anyone. I've never been jealous because I never felt like I was playing a second fiddle.

"Sure, the spotlight was mainly on Pete in 1985 - rightfully so. But I've been told by others that the Reds probably would have finished fifth without me last year (instead of second), and that compliment is good enough for me."

Why was 1985 a strange season for Parker?

Because, very often, there was no logical reason for opposing hurlers to give Parker a pitch to hit - yet they kept doing it.

"Some of Parker's RBI opportunities were there because I got 86 walks (fourth in the N.L.) and had a .395 on-base average," said Rose, who batted just ahead of Parker in the order. "I don't know whether I got all of those walks because I was being more selective with pitches I swung at or because the pitchers, subconsciously or consciously, didn't want to contribute to my breaking the record. Probably both.

"But, frankly, we couldn't give Parker much protection in the batting order all year, in regard to the guy hitting behind him. Nick Esasky had a pretty good season, but he was up and down. And Buddy Bell never really did get started after we got him in midseason.

"There was one month (July) in which nearly everybody on the team was struggling. But the other teams still didn't pitch around Dave. They kept throwing him stuff down the middle, and he kept belting it."

Said Parker, "All I can say is that I didn't exactly have a Willie Stargell hitting behind me in '85. So I was a little surprised I saw as many good pitches as I did. I only had 52 walks for the year, and some guys on other teams told me that if it had been up to them, I would have walked twice as much."

But if last season was quiet and/or strange, it also was Parker's most enjoyable in baseball.

"It wasn't my best season. That had to be 1978," Parker said. "And my team didn't win a world championship like it did in 1979. But I sure had more fun in 1985 than I did in any other year. Coming back to Cincinnati, my hometown, was like the start of my second life in baseball."

Once upon a time, Parker thought every season was going to be wall-to-wall fun, such as 1971, when he was first invited to spring training with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Parker was 19 at the time; he had never set foot on a major league playing surface. But, on the other hand, he weighed only 220 pounds, and his knee had never felt the surgeon's knife. So he could bunt and beat it out with his speed to first base. Or he could swing from the heels in those anonymous March morning "B" games and wallop 500-foot home runs - usually off the likes of knuckleballer Wilbur Wood, then the Chicago White Sox' ace.

"There's no doubt in my mind that Dave went downtown off me more than any other pitcher in baseball, but all of his dingers came in exhibition games," Wood recalled with a laugh.

The first years of Parker's major league career were on the up curve. He hit .288 as a rookie in 1973 and .282 in '74. He hit .308, .313 and .338 the next three years, leading the N.L. in batting and hits (215) in 1977.

He repeated as batting champion in 1978. "I was named player of the month twice, and I won the MVP award," Parker recalled with obvious relish.

That output qualified him for a new Pittsburgh contract - $8.1 million for the next five years.

"Looking back, I think my problems all started with that contract," Parker said. "Pittsburgh is a blue-collar city, and no one there thinks any athlete should make that kind of money."

But how could the problems start in 1979, when the Pirates won the World Series with their "We Are Family" theme song?

"Well, the 'Family' thing was genuine, and it was great," Parker recalled. "But I still got the feeling that somebody out there didn't like me. You do tend to get that feeling when your own fans start throwing (flashlight) batteries at your back while you're playing in the outfield.

"At any rate. the 'Family' left Pittsburgh the next year - for good. Stargell kept things together for a while, but the Pirates' internal problems really started after Pops retired in 1982."

Parker recalls 1980 through 1983 only as "the time of the injuries and the craziness."

After the 1980 season, the surgeons finally opened his deteriorating left knee to remove torn cartilage and bone chips. "The knee didn't feel solid again until 1983," he said.

In 1981, he tried to check his swing on a pitch from Houston's Nolan Ryan and suffered ruptured ligaments in his right wrist. Later - same game, same pitcher - he tried to check his swing again and suffered ruptured ligaments in his left wrist. "The right wrist was in a cast for four weeks," he recalled.

In 1982, his left thumb was ruptured when it was jammed against second base while he was stretching a single into a double in a game at Pittsburgh against the Phillies.

"That injury knocked me out for six weeks," he said. "And I had an Achilles tendon problem all through the 1983 season, but at least I started to get things together again that year (his last in Pittsburgh before becoming a free agent). I proved to the Reds that I could still play, and that presented me with a chance to get back home."

Beyond injuries, what about the "craziness" of that time span?

"You mean things like people vandalizing my home and scratching up my car outside the ball park and blowing up my mailbox with a bomb - things like that," Parker said.

"You know, early in my career, I couldn't wait to get to the ball park. I used to arrive at 2:30 p.m., like five hours before the start of a night game. But after baseball stopped being fun, I'd make it a point not to get to the park until 5:30, not until I absolutely had to get there," he said.

It was in this same period that Parker - often injured, often depressed, often carrying 20 to 30 more pounds than his listed playing weight of 230 - started using cocaine.

"But I didn't do coke because I was depressed or because I was hurting," he said. "I did it because five years ago it was something of a fad in baseball. I did it because everybody was doing it."

Parker's use of chemicals formally came to light last September, when he testified under immunity in the Pittsburgh trial of drug supplier Curtis Strong.

And when Parker returned to Cincinnati after his court appearance, it seemed like the weight of the world was off his shoulders. He hit .384 during the final five weeks, with 11 homers and 38 RBIs - far and away his best month of a marvelously consistent season.

But this winter, Parker knew that there still was another shoe to be dropped, that his annual "dose of adversity" - in the form of a penalty for drug involvement from Commissioner Peter Ueberroth - was lurking.

On February 28, Ueberroth declared that Parker was one of baseball's seven "class I" chemical abusers.

Ueberroth decreed that if Parker wanted to play ball in 1986, he would have to turn over 10 percent of his salary ($120,000) to anti-drug programs, contribute 200 hours of his time to community service over the next two years and be available for random drug testing as long as he wore a major league uniform.

The decree left Parker both angry and confused - probably more the latter.

"I find it odd that some of the players who received only 'class II' punishment from the commissioner were using drugs as recently as last year," he said. "My use of cocaine ended five years ago. Isn't there a five-year statute of limitations on everything except murder? I think that the commissioner's action was just a political ploy to force a drug-testing plan for baseball."

But Parker added, "I agree with the commissioner that baseball does need a drug-testing program. For that matter, so does everyone - colleges, high schools, junior high schools. Hell, the problem of drugs starts all the way down in the elementary schools. I applaud the fact the NCAA is going to conduct drug testing for student-athletes.

"What kind of action would I have decided to take if I had been in the commissioner's shoes? I have to admit that I don't know."

Parker said he had no objection to being randomly tested for drugs during the remainder of his career. "I'm not using drugs now, and I haven't used them in five years, so there's no reason I should be afraid of testing," he said.

He said he certainly had no objection to spending 100 hours a year in community service. "I've been contributing at least that much time every year for the last four years," he said.

How about the $120,000 dip into his wallet?

"Obviously, it's a pretty damned large fine, and I'm pretty damned angry about it," he said. "But I'll pay it, and it will still be worth every penny of that $120,000 if, by doing so, I can put all of this behind me."

The operable word is "if".

"Like I said, I'm going to play five more years," he said. "I have some personal goals - to get as close to 3,000 hits as possible and to finish with a 300 career average.

"I plan to have fun in those five years. I hope to have fun.

"But if I don't have fun, then I guess my retirement will turn out to be a real celebration - the celebration of getting away from it all."

[Proverbial Psalms]

I loved Dave Parker (and Willie Stargell) back in the day... they were definitely players with very distinct personalities- and (aside from the drugs) made watching baseball more entertaining...