Whicker: Allen, Parker will finally have plaques in Cooperstown
Former sluggers Dick Allen and Dave Parker were elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday. Photo: MLB.com
December 11, 2024
By Mark Whicker
Canadian Baseball Network
The Mets improved their roster by signing Juan Soto this week, but their upgrades weren’t the biggest.
The Cooperstown Plaques did even better. They picked up two Most Valuable Players. They got faster, more powerful and definitely more flamboyant. They improved their box office and they scared a lot of pitchers. They didn’t lose anything, at least not compared to the players themselves, who won’t ever replace the years they’ve spent waiting.
Dick Allen and Dave Parker were both punished by the Baseball Writers Association of America for behavior. Neither of them came close to the 75 percent of the vote required for induction. That meant they had to slog through the anonymous muck of the Veterans Committee, in which 16 former players, executives and media members meet in chambers. Allen had been through six of those rituals without success. Parker had gone through three. But on Sunday, Parker got 14 votes and Allen 13, and they will be inducted next summer.
It’s too late for Allen, who died in 2020. Parker is still around, but he’s fighting Parkinson’s disease. There will be a large contingent from Philadelphia, where Allen began his ride in 1964, and from Pittsburgh, where Parker led the Pirates to their last World Series championship in 1979. This, of course, proves the durability of irony because Allen and the Philly fans were sworn enemies in the late 60s, when he was drawing “No” in the dirt around first base with his foot. A fan threw a battery at Parker in Three Rivers Stadium, when he was trying to drag around a bad knee, and he was overweight, and no longer resembled the best player in baseball, which he unquestionably was.
Both Allen and Parker had to salvage themselves elsewhere. Allen won the MVP for the White Sox, when he won the “slash” triple crown and hit 37 homers with 113 RBIs in 1972. That was his fourth stopover, and he would return to Philly and wind it up with Oakland in 1977. He wound up with 351 homers and a .292 career batting average, and he led his league in slugging three times and OPS four times. At 22, he had 201 hits for the Phillies.
Parker got MVP votes when he was 22 and when he was 39. He went to Cincinnati, his hometown, and led the league in total bases in 1985 and 1986.
Three years later he was a driver on Oakland’s World Series championship team, when he drove in 97 runs.
“They had all that thunder,” Parker said, “but I went there and taught them how to win.”
In Milwaukee the next year, he drove in 92, and wound up with 2,712 hits. His MVP season was 1978, when he was tops in the N.L. in doubles, slugging, OPS and batting average.
“When the leaves turn brown, I’ll be wearing the batting crown,” he predicted.
Although Parker was a behemoth at 6-foot-5 and 230 pounds, and it has been said that his ego was even bigger, he never hit more than 34 home runs. But he was a base-stealer before his knee blew up, and he was a master in every phase, particularly rightfield. His most famous play remains his gasp-worthy throw to the plate in the 1979 All-Star Game, when he erased Brian Downing from deep in Seattle’s Kingdome, with help from Gary Carter’s tag.
That was Parker’s legacy. The metrics don’t show how often he did things that overshadowed the game.
Allen never got more than 19 percent of the BBWAA vote in the 15 years he was eligible. He earned part of that neglect, of course, because he operated in his own zone, ignoring time commitments, holding out for more money, blowing off batting practice, stiffing the writers who would be his electorate. It was no secret that he preferred to be at the racetrack, and he became a jockey agent after he left baseball. When artificial turf came along, Allen said, “If a horse can’t eat it, I don’t want to play on it.”
It went downhill when he got into a fight with veteran Frank Thomas at the Phillies’ batting cage in 1965. That was Thomas’ last day as a Phillie, and the fans tore into Allen from then on. But then his bat would do something outrageous, like the home run off the flagpole in Connie Mack Stadium off Nelson Briles of the Cardinals.
“I’m glad the flagpole was there,” Briles said, “and I’m glad they tore the stadium down. That way I can claim it never happened. It was all hearsay.”
Asked how he handled Allen’s periodic acts of defiance, manager Gene Mauch stared into space as only he could and replied, “I find him, I fine him and I play him. And when it happens again, I find him, I fine him and I play him. And when it happens again….”
Parker had no serious conflicts with his teammates. He was the clubhouse pot-stirrer, the genial needler who brought everyone into the circle. But he also was a cocaine user, the dimensions of which came out during the trial of Curtis Strong. Parker and others were suspended for a year by commissioner Peter Ueberroth, who then commuted the suspensions because the drug users agreed to contribute money to drug problems and perform community service. Ueberroth also wanted urine testing, but the players’ union nixed that.
So Parker was bypassed for years while inferior players got the call. He said he cried a little when the word came down. It was a relief to most everyone else, including those voters who came to live by the Dave Parker Rule: If a candidate isn’t as good as Parker was, his box wasn’t getting checked. Most years, the Rule ruled out everyone on the ballot.
Allen and Parker fill in some holes in the Cooperstown Plaques’ lineup card. They got in because the Veterans Committee changes every year, and the new members bring new opinions. Perhaps a spirit of forgiveness will someday allow Barry Bonds to join a gallery in which he would automatically be one of the top five players. Better yet, commissioner Rob Manfred might someday wake up and feel Presidential enough to give Pete Rose a full pardon. He could even allow Draft Kings to put an ad on the plaque.