PITTSBURGH — I know all about Parkinson's disease. It ravaged my father Ray's mind and body, eventually killing him in January 2004. I know what Dave Parker is going through. The deadly illness can bring even Pittsburgh's biggest, baddest sports star to his knees.
"I have good and bad days, but mostly good days," Parker said. "I'm dealing with it. It's definitely the toughest fight because you don't know what you're getting. One day, you wake up in the morning and your legs work good and everything is fine. The next day, your legs are working bad and your back is bad. You don't have balance. It brings on something new every day."
This was recently. Parker appeared on 93.7 The Fan to promote his new book, "Cobra: A Life of Baseball and Brotherhood." He will turn 70 on June 9 and is living in Cincinnati, his hometown.
Parker's book is raw and bawdy, the language not for everyone. But that was Parker. He was loud, boisterous, unafraid to tell everyone how good he was. And he was fabulous, the rare five-tool player who could hit, hit for power, run, field and throw. He became baseball's first $1 million-a-year position player before the 1979 season.
"I mean, you couldn't do much more than I did as a player," Parker said.
The man played the game all out, all the time, just as his hometown hero Pete Rose did. One of the anecdotes in the book details his home-plate collision with New York Mets catcher John Stearns in 1978. It left Parker with a fractured cheekbone. He quickly returned to the lineup after surgery, wearing a hockey mask.
"Dave, you play too hard," Parker quotes his Pirates manager, Chuck Tanner, telling him later in his career when his injuries continued to mount.
That wasn't hyperbole.
That was the truth.
The book details Parker's early life in Cincinnati, how he became a father at 17, how he lost his sister, Dorothy, at a young age and how three knee surgeries ended his dream of playing college football. As it turned out, football's loss was baseball's gain.
"You got some swing, son," Parker quotes Pirates Hall of Famer Pie Traynor as telling him at Parker's first spring training with the Pirates in 1971. "You're going to be special one day."
The best part of Parker's book was his memories of the 1979 "We Are Family" Pirates. Willie Stargell was the leader, but Parker was the energy that drove that team. He was the No. 1 character in a clubhouse filled with characters. Tim Foli. Bill Madlock. John Milner. John Candelaria. Dock Ellis, Parker's chief running mate for a long time. Phil Garner ...
I covered that team and still remember Parker's constant bickering with Garner. It always was humorous, occasionally had an edge and served to keep the team loose as it went on to win the World Series, the Pirates' most recent championship. We might not live long enough to see another.
"You couldn't pay for that entertainment that we gave out," Parker said of Garner.
Parker called Tanner the perfect manager for the 1979 Pirates "because he governed with one eye and one ear. He didn't see everything and didn't hear everything."
And, of course, Parker thought Stargell was the perfect leader. He wrote of Stargell going out of his way in the beginning to introduce himself at Parker's first spring training: "We're a close group. You ever need anything, just ask." Parker also wrote about Stargell's stern message to him at the end when Stargell retired after the 1982 season and knew Parker was using cocaine: "Get healthy and go find The Cobra. I know he's still in there somewhere."
Parker openly addressed his cocaine use in the book, writing that he took it to help with the chronic pain from his knees. He wrote of his embarrassment about being called to testify at the Pittsburgh Drug Trials in 1985 and about his bitterness when the Pirates later sued him for $5.3 million in deferred payments for breach of contract. The two sides settled for him giving back $2.4 million.
"I stand accountable for everything that I did," Parker said. "That's why I emphasized it in the book. I thought the cocaine use was a fad because everybody was doing it. I got victimized by being around it. When I walked away [from cocaine in 1982], I walked away. I wasn't rehabilitated. I didn't miss any games. I fulfilled my obligations."
Not everyone appreciated Parker. He had a number of objects thrown at him during games, including a battery at Three Rivers Stadium on, ironically, Willie Stargell Day in 1980. Parker walked off the field that day.
"A fan tried to hurt me on the day they all celebrated a Black man," Parker wrote. "That wasn't objective racism. That was personal. Color-blind hate hurts more than the N-word. Took me a lot to forget about that pain."
Parker, reflecting last week, said, "The battery and other stuff that happened in the stadium, I thought, was created because the coal and steel industry were down. The city was going through a renaissance at the time and nobody could identify with somebody making that kind of money."
Parker played with the Reds, Athletics, Brewers, Blue Jays and Angels after he left the Pirates following the 1983 season. He was hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1998 and had a front-row seat for Mark McGwire's epic home run chase with Sammy Sosa. He has some interesting thoughts about McGwire and the other steroids users at that time.
"Barry Bonds was the best player in baseball for years. What he did as a player should hold up and get him in the Hall. ... But it doesn't take a scientist to figure out it's abnormal for a man to hit a ball that far. [Bonds and McGwire] have got that to contend with."
Parker played with and then for Rose as his manager in Cincinnati from 1984-87. He addressed Rose's lifetime ban from baseball because of gambling.
"Rule 21 is stiff," Parker said. "I mean, that's the cardinal rule. When you mess with that, you're flirting with your baseball career. I think he should be in the Hall for what he achieved on the field, but he's still got to deal with Rule 21."
Parker believes he also belongs in the Hall of Fame and isn't afraid to say so. He says he has "not a clue" why he isn't in. Much of his book makes his case.
"Everybody else wrote their opinion about Dave Parker," he said. "I thought it was about time that I told about myself."
Mission accomplished.
