Showing posts with label Dave Parker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dave Parker. Show all posts

Monday, May 13, 2013

#175 - Dave Parker


What a card: This is the first base card of Dave Parker as a Cincinnati Red (he was with Cincinnati for update sets for both Topps and Fleer). He signed as a free agent in December of 1983.

My observation on the front: Parker looks as powerful as ever with that swing.

More opinion from me: It was very, very strange at the time to see Parker in anything other than a Pirates uniform. And I think a lot of people today don't remember what big rivals the Reds and Pirates were during the 1970s and into the early '80s. Of all teams for him to go to -- the Reds! (But Parker is also a Cincinnati native).

Something you might know: Parker was a fixture of the "We Are Family" Pirates, the first player to get a million-dollar-a-year contract, a man with an unbelievable throwing arm, and someone who paid for his involvement with cocaine during the Pittsburgh drug trials (Parker claimed that it was the reason he finished second in the '85 MVP voting instead of first).

Something you might not know: When Dave Parker made this commercial, little did he know that he would be the only one of the three not in the Hall of Fame, even though many were predicting a Hall career for him at the time.


My observation on the back: Courter Tech is now Cincinnati State Technical and Community College.

The blog wants to speak now: A small update to the News tab. I'm going to have to cut back these updates a little bit if I want to continue to make tab updates for the remainder of this blog.