Baseball Hall of Fame must elect Pirates' Dave Parker and reverse heartbreaking trend

For an institution built on preserving the legacies of baseball's immortals so that they may live forever, the Baseball Hall of Fame does a surprisingly poor job at doing so while those immortals can still feel the glow. With Pittsburgh Pirates slugger and intimidator Dave Parker back on the ballot this winter, the Hall's Classic Baseball Era committee cannot afford to repeat the mistake that has manifested in multiple tragic instances across the past 15 years.

For every Tony Oliva, it feels as if there are two Minnie Minosos. Neither Minoso's counting stats nor wide-ranging impact changed between the end of his career and his 2022 election. The only thing different was that Minoso no longer had the ability to bask in his richly deserved coronation; he passed away in 2015.

This winter, the Hall's eight-man Classic Baseball Era ballot features two stars who passed away in the last four years, and whose resumés merit induction: Dick Allen, who fell one vote short in 2014 and died in 2020, and Luis Tiant, who left us this summer. A noteworthy case can be made for all eight of the names that appear -- yes, even Sabermetric devil Steve Garvey, who owned the decade of the 1970s by the metrics that used to matter.

But Parker, the 73-year-old slugger with a best-in-baseball peak, who saw a trio of prime years robbed by addiction and the back half of his career saved by regeneration, is the only man on the ballot for whom time and its ravages can be temporarily halted by just one phone call.

Pittsburgh Pirates' Dave Parker deserves Baseball Hall of Fame call in December election

The once-hulking Parker has been fighting Parkinson's Disease for the past 12 years. What began with a tremor has now left him wheelchair-bound, as he was when he rejoined his former teammates at PNC Park this past May. I choose to remember Parker the way he once was: Boppin', as well as prone to uncoiling in right field and delivering on-the-money lasers by appointment.

Parker's 40.1 career bWAR, viewed in black-and-white through a reductive modern lens, is slightly lacking. But his five top-five MVP finishes (two of them, in 1985 and 1986, on the comeback trail with the Reds after his Pittsburgh peak was cut short), seven All-Star appearances, and boundless eye-popping highlights tell a more interesting story -- as does, for the truly pedantic out there, his 37.4 WAR total during his seven-year peak. Parker is among the most talented players in the game's history. Despite his mid-career stumbles, he did more than enough to be honored. And he is still here, watching. His eyes are still blessedly open.

Quite simply, if the Hall of Fame debates in circles on Parker or rebukes him at the margins, they'll be committing their most sinful omission since the days of Ron Santo, the joy-over-everything Cub who lost a limb, but never lost hope, only to be disappointed in life and elected in death (Class of 2012, passed in 2010). I am begging, for once, for the Hall voters to allow their collective conscience to guide them towards a superstar who meets the standards and has earned a measure of grace. If your museum is as dedicated to telling the story of baseball as you claim it is, then you should make sure that story is retold to the men who wrote it, before it's too late.

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