I somehow missed news of the death of Dave Parker, aka the Cobra, the fine right fielder and slugger recently inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame through the veterans committee. I learned from our Paul Kengor’s fine column that Parker passed a month ago at 74 from complications of Parkinson’s disease, a sad end for a big man whose hands were magic with a bat, glove, or baseball.
Greater speed and spin have left Major League hitters flailing at pitches, so often unable to put the round bat on the round ball.
The late, great pitcher Dizzy Dean, more adept with the fastball than with the English language, and ever less than modest, often informed us: “I’m not saying I was the greatest pitcher ever, but I was amongst ‘em.” Paul’s assertion that Parker was the best player of the late seventies and early eighties is debatable — discussing these things is one of the joys of competitive sports — but he was surely amongst ‘em. I was privileged to have seen Parker play on television and consider myself better off for the experience.
The multi-talented Parker was the subject of one of the many amusing stories that come out of the summer game. It was well known in baseball circles that our Dave, whose greatest years came with the Pittsburgh Pirates, was not a slave to off-season conditioning and would report to spring camp overweight. Sometimes quite a bit overweight. Baseball fans are familiar with the yellow Pirates uniform with black lettering. On the first day of camp one spring Dave waddled out in this kit. When Pirates slugger Willie Stargell spotted him he said: “Geez, Dave. You look like a school bus.”
He probably did. Parker always worked hard in spring camp and was at his weight, about 230, and in baseball shape by Opening Day. He could get away with this because spring training was a more laid-back, free-and-easy business back in the day — at least for veterans who knew they had a job — than it is today. It was a little Florida/Arizona vacation, complete with beer in the club house, before the real games began in April.
In contemporary corporate baseball, players are obliged to report to spring camps in shape. They’re assigned a playing weight and are fined if they don’t meet this. The beer has disappeared from the club house, as well as most of the laughing and tomfoolery on the field. No fun allowed. All business. Too much money involved these days in all our games for overpaid athletes to be messing about.
Before we leave this subject, please indulge me one more favorite first day of spring training story. The Parker story may well be true; the following is almost certainly apocryphal. On reporting one 1950s spring, the great Yogi Berra told the clubhouse man, “Give me five Yankees caps, size 7 ¾.” The clubhouse guy says, “Yogi, you know you wear a size 7 ½ cap.” Yogi replies, “Yeah, but I ain’t in shape yet.” Beats there a heart so cold that it doesn’t love Yogi?
No long-time baseball fan, of which I am one, can argue with Paul’s assertion that 1970s baseball was very fine indeed, and better in so many ways than today’s product, played in stadiums named after soulless corporations. (How on earth can hometown fans even remember the name of their own team’s ball yard?) His catalogue of teams and players from that era — his own Pirates, Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine, the Red Sox coming into their own then — are legendary. Recalling lineups including such names as Bench, Parker, Rose, Lynn, Morgan, Perez, Fisk, Concepcion, Yastremski, and of course, Reggie Reggie (the straw that stirred the Yankees’ drink — at least by Reggie’s his own report), are enough to make baseball fans of a certain age work up a good head of nostalgia.
The 1975 World Series that Cincinnati’s Joe Morgan settled with a bloop single in the ninth inning of Game Seven, thereby disappointing all of New England yet again, is considered by most baseball purists (me again) as the best World Series ever played. Sawks catcher Carlton Fisk’s 12th inning Game Six walk-off home run, helped to stay fair by Fisk’s body English, forcing a seventh game in that one, may be the most repeated World Series highlight clip of all time.
In addition to nostalgia, this walk down baseball’s memory lane also provokes regret. At a certain age — I have two decades and change on Paul — one should go easy on the, “Back in my day things were better” harangues, especially before younger audiences. It wears thin very quickly. No bore like an old bore.
But, damn it, some things were better. And baseball is one of them. The MLB product in Paul’s favorite decade, the Seventies, as well as even the Fifties, when with the help of my Dad I became enchanted with the finest game ever devised by God or man, was far more entertaining than today’s strikeout rodeos.
For those who don’t wish to read an old guy’s complaints, move on here to another column.
Bigger, stronger, pitchers have led to higher pitch velocities. Within memory, a pitcher who broke 100 on the speed gun would be sports page headline news. Now just about every team has relievers who routinely hit three digits. This and a host of high spin pitchers have led to an avalanche of strikeouts and pitcher arm injuries. The Tommy John estate should have insisted on residuals every time a pitcher has a surgical procedure that bears Tommy’s name.
When the start of the MLB season was delayed in 2020 because of COVID, ESPN broadcast old games, mostly World Series games between the Yankees and the Dodgers. I enjoyed these. In one game the odious Howard Cosell (“did I mention I went to Yale?”) announced in that irritating stentorian tone of his: “The last two pitches came in at 92 and 93 miles per hour. They’re really bringing it tonight.” Bringing it? Hell, today the ball girl throws 92.
Greater speed and spin have left Major League hitters flailing at pitches, so often unable to put the round bat on the round ball. Strike out after strike out is just not that interesting to watch. Baseball is more entertaining when the ball is put in play.
The strikeout pandemic is also advanced by the new hitting philosophy — encouraged by number-crunching computer jockeys in front offices — that for maximum results, all hitters should always swing for the fences. I grind my teeth, and I bet Paul does too, when with a runner on third and fewer than two outs, the batter practically swings himself out of his cleats in an attempt to drive the ball into the next area code. (JUST PUT THE BALL IN PLAY, HOMER! GET THE RUNNER IN FROM THIRD!)
In addition to these melancholy evolutions, the game has been further disfigured by dopey rules out of MLB. I sometimes wonder if before he became El Jefe Maximo of Baseball Rob Manfred had ever been to a baseball game. He certainly has no respect for the game’s history and traditions. Part of the charm of baseball, until Mr. Harvard Law began tinkering with it, was that it was free of clocks. In an attempt to shorten the length of games, pitchers and batters are now on a time leash. Baseball has its own tempo, quite apart from the minutes and seconds hands of a clock.
Then followed the abomination of the “ghost runner,” whereby each inning beyond nine is started with a runner placed on second base. This would be an insult to the cops and the firemen playing a slow pitch softball game on Sunday afternoon. Other rules, such as how many throws to first base are allowed, how many batters a reliever must face, and where infielders must play, are uncalled for invasions of field managers’ prerogatives. What Casey Stengel, Sparky Anderson, and other managers from baseball’s glory decades would have thought of these new rules is unprintable. So is my take. I’m giving you the G-rated version here.
The game is also diminished by becoming increasingly high-tech. Computerized. Larded with all manner of electronic wizbangery. Spread sheets in the dugout rather than spit cups is doubtless more sanitary, but it doesn’t make the game any more entertaining. Now pitchers get pitch calls from their catchers electronically. Hives and hemorrhoids, Rob! Why do you think God gave catchers fingers? There’s even talk of having balls and strikes called by computers. Should this come to pass, it would be the surest sign yet of moral and intellectual decay. If robots are going to replace home plate umpires, why not go the rest of the way and have robot players?
There are far more charges and specifications against the current game and the villains who have sprung its rhythms. But I’m probably testing patience already. Not to mention working my way into a state. Prosecution will rest. For now. So hats off to 1970s baseball, one of the few good things in an otherwise flakey decade. (Not even E-Bay will touch Nehru jackets.) And RIP Dave Parker. Also Ryne Sandberg, who we lost last week.
Pray for the Grand Old Game. It still has its beautiful moments, and at its best it can still move us. But it’s in need of repair.
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