Calling on the Cobra

In 1980, Dave Parker hired a public relations agency to test the waters of celebrity and make him more of a household name. The agency reached out to The Aquarian Weekly, a metropolitan area entertainment weekly entertainment that I was freelancing for and I was assigned to write a profile of Parker.

I called him at his home in Bradenton, Florida where the Pittsburgh Pirates trained each spring, and the interview went well. I pictured him in an oceanfront condo, tastefully furnished, while I sat on the floor of my bedroom. Reading it over today, it was a pretty safe article, mostly vanilla answers to mostly vanilla questions.

(Aside from the fact that I was speaking with Parker, who at the time looked like he might someday rank among the game’s all-time greats, I remember that I’d bought a Radio Shack device to tape our phone conversation, a wire with a suction cup at one end for the phone receiver and a jack at the other end to be plugged into a tape recorder. Imagine the terror when I played back the interview and our voices sounded as distant and tinny as if they’d been recorded from Pluto. Thankfully, I took notes).

Parker was one of the coolest major leaguers of the era. He wore an earring and warmed up in the on-deck circle swinging a sledgehammer. He had swagger and presence. And as a black player making significant money, he drew frequent insults and threats from some fans.

A Pirates radio announcer nicknamed Parker the Cobra, a quick-strike predator. (Unlike Kobe Bryant, who famously gave himself the nickname Black Mamba).

Some of Parker’s quotes from our interview that were a little more vanilla fudge than vanilla:

“I have no trouble whatsoever in getting up for every ballgame. I could play baseball in the middle of December in the snow.”

“I’ve been doing some p.r. for myself. I’ve always thought of myself as being just a ballplayer, not really needing the hype. I haven’t been much of a public figure, but I think it’s time people got to know Dave Parker.”

Dave, be careful what you wish for. Unfortunately, part of Parker’s legacy lies with his role in the Pittsburgh drug trials following the 1985 season. He was among several players who testified against a drug dealer and was suspended for the following season before their sentences were lifted in exchange for community service, drug testing and fines. Age, weight problems and injuries began to catch up with Parker and he called it quits in 1991, a 19-year career.

Parker died yesterday; he’d been suffering with Parkinson’s disease for several years. Timing, which he had as a batter, sometimes doesn’t translate into real life. Parker died 29 days before he was to be inducted in the Hall of Fame.