Dave Parker’s memoir ‘Cobra’ points out how MLB can rebuild its cultural clout
The one-time National League MVP’s newly released autobiography is an elegy for when baseball was a more visceral game that was elevated by Black star power, which MLB seemed to take for granted.
MLBBy Neate Sager on
April 1, 2021
April 1, 2021
Dave Parker was at least a six-tool player, perhaps even seven, depending on whether charisma and swagger are separate categories. It would have been easy enough for Parker (seen above at the Pirates’ 2019 40th anniversary celebration of their 1979 title team) to write an autobiography that trades on the nostalgia his legend conjures, usually through tweets of the seven-time all-star outfielder wearing a swaggy self-designed T-shirt, smoking a dart in the Pittsburgh Pirates dugout or making a throw from deep in the right-field corner at the Seattle Kingdome to cut down a runner at home plate in the 1979 all-star game, the season of Pittsburgh’s last World Series title.