A Tale of Two Pirates

 Today four players were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, including Ichiro Suzuki (who I saw play late in his career in San Francisco) and Dave Parker, a name perhaps only diehard fans, or diehard Pittsburgh Pirates fans remember.  But I sure do.  He once personally threatened to beat me up.

Dave Parker died on June 28, less than a month before he would belatedly be inducted.  He was a key player on the Pirates 1979 World Championship team that won the World Series between two Pittsburgh Steelers Super Bowl championships, inaugurating Pittsburgh as the City of Champions.  

His accomplishments are major: National League Most Valuable Player, two batting championships, seven All Star appearances, including (if I remember correctly) an All Star MVP. He was a complete player: he hit for power as well as average, he fielded well and especially had a rocket arm, something he shared with the right fielder for the Pirates he succeeded, Roberto Clemente.

But he was not altogether a popular player in Pittsburgh.  Pittsburgh has had complicated relationships with its black athletes over the years.  It seemed that for every hero they loved, there was a villain they irrationally hated.  The beloved hero in those days was Willie Stargell.  Not only was he a superstar but he was a warm, magnetic personality, with a big smile and a generous reputation.  He was loveable, especially in these mature years..  

Dave Parker was not so easily loveable.  He was younger and brash, always with something to say. He got called arrogant and ungrateful.  He was the first million dollar a year player in sports and some fans resented him for it. 

In 1980, on Willie Stargell Day, during the eighth inning of the first game of a doubleheader at Three Rivers Stadium, someone in the stands threw a 9 volt battery at him as he stood in right field, almost hitting his head. He took himself out of the game.

 I was there that day, on assignment to the New York Times Magazine for a story on the relationship of Pittsburgh's championship teams to the city, otherwise reeling from the collapse of its steel industry.  I saw him in the locker room afterwards, a sad and sobered man.

Earlier--maybe that day, maybe an earlier game--I was in the locker room before the game.  It was a notoriously raucous scene, loud and a little crazy.  Someone smashed one of the wooden stools they each had in front of their lockers, and someone else picked up the big round seat of it and threw it across the room like a discus or a frisbee.

I was trying to interview players.  I think I only succeeded getting a quiet Bill Robinson to talk to me. Dave Parker was among the loud and rambunctious.  He told me that he was hated, that tires on his Mercedes were slashed and similar acts, but warned me not to print this or "I'll come after you, Big Bill."  The last had a mocking tone--he was clearly much bigger than me.  

But I do recall it was after that double header when in a much softer voice he apologized.  I hadn't taken him seriously, I thought it was funny.  There was something about him--he was exuberant, not a bully--that communicated itself to me. 

About five years later he testified against a local drug dealer, admitting that he had been a cocaine user, and the conduit for coke in the Pirates locker room.  Somehow that wasn't a surprise.  The difference of his affect before the game and after it told the story.  

I still think of him as one of the most dynamic players I'd ever seen, certainly up close.  But when he left Pittsburgh as soon as his contract was up also wasn't surprising.  He never got his due there.

Another vintage Pittsburgh Pirates star I saw play a number of times was also in the news this summer. For some reason, this year everybody wrote about Bobby Bonilla Day.

That same dynamic, of the beloved black star and the reviled black star on the Pirates, was repeated when Bobby Bonilla and Barry Bonds patrolled the outfield on a 90s team that was always in the playoffs but never quite made it to the Series.  This time it was the glowering Bonds who was the villain, and the sunny, smiling Bonilla the hero.

Just as a fan in the stands, watching Barry Bonds hit was amazing.  I recall a game when I was in the upper deck looking down at the diamond, watching him spray six scorching hits to all fields.  But on a lucky day I got a special thrill watching Bobby Bonilla hit, entirely because of where I was sitting.

I was living and working in the city of Pittsburgh then, and on impulse I walked over to the ball park one sunny afternoon.  Since I got there after the game started, a scalper outside was desperate to sell his ticket, so I got a very good seat for a pretty good price.  I recall barely sitting down just a couple of rows behind home plate when Bonilla came up.  A switch-hitter, he was batting left handed which, when I played as a kid, was my side of the plate.  A pitch came screaming in at his head, and he dived and fell in a cloud of dust.  But the next pitch he hit a line drive home run.  I was so close when he swung and connected, and I could follow the ball more or less from his point of view, all the way to the right field stands: it was the closest I could ever come to feeling what it was like to hit a big league homer.

Bonilla was in the news because July 1 is now famously called Bobby Bonilla Day.  Years ago when he signed a contract with the New York Mets and they mutually agreed to part company, they made an unprecedented bargain.

  Bonilla was owed nearly $6 million.  But he made a deal--he would take exactly nothing.  Nothing at all, for ten years.  But after that, he would be paid annually based on the accrued value of what they owed him, which eventually came to a total of over $1 million a year, every year until 2035.  So every July 1, he gets this annuity.  In New York it became known--ironically if not cynically-- as Bobby Bonilla Day.  By now however it's become something else, a little more joyful.

Deferred payment has since become a thing for sports contracts and contracts in other fields. Today's biggest star, Ohtani, has a deferred contract with the Dodgers--he gets a measly 1 or 2 million a year, but many years from now, that balloons to something like $50 million a year. It makes sense for him--he can get all the endorsement money and other fringe benefits from his current fame, but after his playing days, he's got an assured very decent retirement income, even if grocery prices continue to go up at their present pace.

Bonilla, who was a great hitter for the Pirates and even later, is proud of that contract, not only for what it means for his family, but for the example it set and suggests beyond baseball--about the benefits of a guaranteed income, and security later in life.