'More respect for Dave Parker than anybody': Baseball greats remember Cincinnati legend

Yahoo

29-06-2025

Just how powerful was the 6-foot-5, 230-pound force of nature they called 'The Cobra' back in the day?
Powerful enough that long before Cincinnati legend Dave Parker, who died at the age of 74 Saturday, June 28, won his own long-awaited place in baseball's Hall of Fame, he helped open the path for another Cincinnati-raised player to reach Cooperstown.
Advertisement
And just maybe powerful enough that his lasting impact helped the Reds win a championship three years after he last played for them.
Just ask Barry Larkin, the Cincinnati-born Hall of Fame shortstop, about the night Parker and the young Eric Davis backed him into the dimly lit corner of the Riverfront Stadium tunnel near the Reds' batting cage.
Hall of Famers Barry Larkin and Dave Parker before a game in 1987.
'They told me after a game one day they wanted to work on my hitting out in the cages,' said Larkin, a happy-to-be-there, third shortstop on manager Pete Rose's team.
So Larkin grabbed his bat after the game, headed out the clubhouse door and turned the corner to the cage, only to find a hallway so dim and quiet it looked empty.
Advertisement
Reds Dave Parker death Pittsburgh Pirate Dave Parker, ex-Reds/Pirates great, dies 1 month before Hall of Fame induction: reactions
Reds San Diego Padres Andrew Abbott Andrew Abbott bolstered his case for the MLB All-Star Game but the Reds lost to the Padres
'So I start walking back into the clubhouse,' he said.
Then came a voice from the shadows.
'Dave Parker says, 'No, m—-, bring your a— out here!'
Larkin trudged toward the voice, heart racing, to where Parker and Davis waited.
'They impressed upon me that I needed to start playing with more of a sense of urgency,' Larkin said, 'and they impressed upon me that if I did not change and start playing with more of a sense of urgency that it was going to be a major problem physically for me.'
Advertisement
At which point Parker dismissed him abruptly with a few more choice words.
'I walked in the clubhouse,' Larkin said, 'and was like, 'Oh, my God. What in the world is going on here?' '
The next day he approached Davis — 'not Dave because I was scared as crap of Dave' — to make sure he had the details he needed to follow the orders he couldn't refuse.
Most of it had to do with a more aggressive approach at the plate.
Barely a year later, Larkin was an All-Star.
Cincinnati Reds teammates Eric Davis, left, Dave Parker and Kal Daniels warming up before their exhibition game against Montreal Expos at Greer Stadium April 5, 1987.
'That was a tipping point in my career,' he said. 'I was just happy to be along (until then). Until those boys threatened my life.'
Parker's impact was sudden and so outsized when he joined his hometown team as a free agent after the 1983 season that Davis called him "Pops" and Larkin called him one of the three most influential forces that helped that young core develop into what became the 1990 World Series champion – after all were gone. That included Rose and veteran outfielder Ken Griffey.
Advertisement
Larkin shouted out Parker's bigger than life influence during his Hall of Fame speech in 2012.
New York Mets manager Carlos Mendoza pauses for a moment of silence to honor Pittsburgh Pirates former Hall of Fame right fielder Dave Parker on his passing before the game against the Pirates at PNC Park Saturday, June 28.
But Parker was bigger than life to those who played long before he contributed to his hometown team for four years. He was one of the most feared hitters in baseball in the 1970s, with a hitting prowess matched only by the strength of his charisma and personality, and a right-field arm for the ages.
Contemporaries who openly questioned what took so long for him to get elected to the Hall of Fame just six months ago now grapple with the cruelty of his death Saturday after a long illness coming just one month before he might have enjoyed the glow of his Cooperstown induction.
Advertisement
'I ended up playing with Dave twice, here and Milwaukee, and I grew up in Pittsburgh watching him,' said Reds manager Terry Francona, who learned of Parker's death just before game time Saturday.
'I know he was sick; we all did. But I wished he could have been in Cooperstown this summer to get his Hall of Fame plaque. I know how I felt about it. I can't imagine how he would have.'
JULY 11, 1976: The Pirates' Dave Parker slides into third base advancing from first on double in fifth inning against the Reds. He comes up, signals time to retrieve his lost cap, then is sent sprawling as Pete Rose bowls him over with a late tag.
Never mind why the recognition took so long.
'The superstar players of that era all knew how good he was,' said All-Star closer Kent Tekulve, another Cincinnati native who was Parker's teammate in Pittsburgh and a one-time Red in the immediate aftermath of Parker's time at Riverfront.
Advertisement
'What I didn't know when he went from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati with all those young guys on that team, he became the guy,' Tekulve said. 'He became the Stargell of the Cincinnati Reds when he went there.
'He was already gone when I got there. And they were still talking about what Dave Parker meant to them.'
'I had more respect for Dave Parker than probably anybody,' said Paul O'Neill, who debuted in 1985 and went on to become a five-time All-Star. 'When I got called up he was the right fielder, and I was on the bench watching how he went about things. He was a great player; there's no other way to put it. He was the kind of guy that would talk to the younger players.
'It's certainly well deserved he's in the Hall of Fame. I don't know why it took so long.'
Advertisement
Even in failing health in December, Parker — who battled Parkinson's Disease for more than a decade — showed the power of his personality during a conference call with media up on his election, saying what he remembers of the time with the Reds was 'I was the best player they had.'
The City of Cincinnati and the Cincinnati Reds recognized Reds hall of fame baseball player Dave Parker, center, with an honorary street naming near his childhood home in the South Cumminsville neighborhood of Cincinnati, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023. Borden Street at Elmore Street received the honorary, secondary name of Dave Parker Way
He got no argument from Davis, even if that was long after Parker's days of his batting titles, his 1978 MVP and the days of swinging a sledgehammer in the on-deck circle in Pittsburgh.
"He was the best player. Oh, yeah,' Davis said. 'I was 21 years old when we had just gotten him from Pittsburgh in '84, and I can remember the first time I saw him I was still in awe. I went up to introduce myself, and the first thing he said was, 'I know who you are. Get out of the way; I'll talk to you a little later.'
Advertisement
'That was his way of breaking the ice. But he took care of me. I didn't pay for anything for two years. I didn't buy nothing. He took me everywhere. The only thing I had to do was I had to be the first one down to the limo because he wouldn't wait.'
That's the guy teammates remember even all these years later, the boisterous, fun, hard-hitting, hard-laughing giant.
'He was a hoot,' Tekulve said.
Even in 1976 as a young player with Willie Stargell's Pirates, Parker showed up to the clubhouse one day with a T-shirt inspired by music he and teammates listened to, emblazoned with a slogan meant to inspire a briefly slumping lineup and that became an iconic part of his Pirates legacy: 'If You Hear Any Noise It's Just Me And The Boys Boppin.'
Advertisement
'It caught on and people liked it,' Parker said in December. 'But don't try to copyright it. Because it's mine.'
Whether his publicized role in the Pittsburgh drug trials of the 1980s or a media perception of his personality as brash or out of place for a young player – especially a young black player in 1970s baseball – impacted how long it took to get to the Hall of Fame, it was 33 days after he last played a game that he finally made it.
'I'm looking forward to being there. I've been holding this speech in for 15 years,' Parker said the day he finally got the call.
He had just turned 74 when he died.
Advertisement
He didn't get to make his speech. But he did leave behind a generation indebted to him.
'He probably had more impact on young players than any player I've ever been around,' Davis said. 'Black, white, it didn't matter.'
And at his size, 'to be able to move the way that he did with the cachet that he had — he made the game cool for Blacks,' Davis said.
'His game was swagger. He had a style and the cachet to back up his game.'
It probably said a lot about his personality and character that he was able to succeed to the heights he did, not only as quickly as he did but also as the man who would replace the icon in Pittsburgh – Parker debuting as the right field heir apparent to the right fielder of all-time, Roberto Clemente, just months after Clemente's New Year's Eve 1972 death in a plane crash while on a humanitarian mission.
Advertisement
'His ability was off the charts when he first showed up,' Tekulve said.
The rare combination of elite ability and elite charisma might have made him the right guy at the right time in that right field.
'His personality, his confidence, his swagger — all that stuff really helped him in the beginning of his career,' Tekulve said. 'He came in after Clemente and not much dropped off. Definitely personality wise they were different.'
The arm, maybe not quite as different.
Francona said he remembers being a kid in Pittsburgh watching the Pirates' All-Star throw out runners at third and home during the 1979 All-Star game – the latter one of the most famous throws by an outfielder in the last half-decade.
Advertisement
'Then to get to play with him, it's pretty cool,' Francona said. 'I caught him toward the end of his career. He was funny. You could mess with him — not too much.'
The transformation from prospect without a chance to fill an all-time legend's shoes to superstar in his own right was almost as much a physical transformation as it was the power of will and public persuasion.
'When I first saw Dave Parker, he was not skinny like me, but he was thin. Well built but not the big man that he became,' Tekulve said. 'He'd hit a ball to the left side and beat it out.'
At one point in Parker's early days in Pittsburgh, All-Star leader Willie 'Pops' Stargell looked at the skinny young outfielder and said, 'He's going to be bigger and stronger He needs to change his swing to put power into it.'
Advertisement
Parker, a natural line drive hitter, revamped his swing to drive the ball more and wound up not only winning batting titles but becoming one of the most feared sluggers in the game in his prime.
His first full season in the majors, he hit .308 with 25 home runs and led the league in slugging in 1975. Two years later he won the first of back-to-back batting titles and earned the first of seven All-Star selections.
By 1978, he was the National League MVP — snapping a streak of three straight years of Big Red Machine MVPs.
'His size, his tenacity — just a great baseball player,' O'Neill said. 'A great athlete, period.'
Advertisement
And by the time the Courter Tech grad returned to Cincinnati, he did it as a star and mentor, whether he was the best player on the team or not.
'He was the guy,' Larkin said. 'He set the tone in the clubhouse, how we prepared, how loose the clubhouse was. After the game, Dave was a big yapper. He liked to talk a lot. He had this football mentality and tried to inspire us with verbal cues.'
Verbal cues. That's one way to describe the voice from the shadows of that Riverfront Stadium tunnel that night 40 years ago. And Larkin would know.
'He was amazing.'
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: 'More respect for Dave Parker than anybody': How 'Cobra' paid it forward