Pirates-Parker Legal Battle Could Drag Baseball Through Mud Again

The Pittsburgh Pirates’ legal battle to avoid paying off Dave Parker’s $5.3 million deferred contract is revealing the seamy underside of baseball more than any case since the Pittsburgh drug trials of 1985.

The Pirates charged in court documents filed last week that Parker was addicted to cocaine during the team’s 1979 world championship season and for three seasons afterwards.

The documents filed in U.S. District Court also alleged that Parker influenced teammates to buy drugs in the clubhouse, stayed up all night before day games snorting cocaine, and once allowed his weight to balloon to 285, or well above his batting average at the time.

If the case ever reaches court, Parker’s agent, Tom Reich, said last year, it “will make the (1985 drug trials) nightmare look like a marble shoot . . . it will involve the history of cocaine in baseball over the last 10 years, and that history is fairly extensive.”

It is the soft, drug-lined underbelly of the sport that many baseball executives long feared existed but didn’t want to see--or turned their heads to avoid.

Instead of the Pirates vs. the New York Mets, it’s the Pirates vs. Dave Parker--the first case in U.S. sports history where a team has taken a dispute over a player’s performance out of the clubhouse and into the courthouse.

“This is all a bunch of malarkey. Our own statement . . . is going to be vastly different from what the Pirates say happened,” Louis Willenken, a New York attorney, said last week.

Parker’s attorneys have until May 20 to respond. The case will probably go to trial this fall, unless there is an out-of-court settlement.

“Do the Pirates have a case? Absolutely. They do,” said Ralph Cindrich, a Pittsburgh-based player agent who has spoken to bar associations about the Pirates’ suit.

“The key issue may well come down to whether or not the Pirates had actual knowledge of (Parker’s) drug use. If they did, they may be precluded from any legal remedies. And if they did have knowledge, they should have taken affirmative steps during the course of his contract, during the course of his debilitative state,” he said.

The Pirates contend Parker’s cocaine habit not only caused a rapid deterioration in his play from 1979 through 1983, but that his fraudulent refusal to disclose his drug use legally cancels the team’s further financial obligations to him.

The Pirates’ charges also raise the ethical question of whether Reich and Bill Landman, Parker’s agents, had a moral obligation to find out if Parker had a drug problem when they suspected he was using cocaine.

The Pirates’ ownership consortium, which not only has tried to save money but the future of baseball in Pittsburgh, began preparing to take Parker to court shortly after buying the troubled franchise in late 1985.

“The Pirates had every reason to expect that . . . Parker would continue to be one of the best players in baseball during the five-year period of the contract,” according to the Pirates’ document.

“However, because of Parker’s continued usage of cocaine during the period of the contract, the Pirates instead obtained a player whose performance was drug-impaired and whose cocaine usage led to several other adverse effects upon the team . . . including the corruption of other players, a decline in the team’s competitive position (in the National League East) and a deterioration of support from the fans and the sports press.”

To support their case, the Pirates assembled an inch-thick document resulting from interviews with former Parker girlfriends, teammates, opposing players, acquaintances and police.

The statement portrays a player who, at the peak of his career, became a troubled shell of his former self, a mediocre, out-of-shape athlete and paranoid, moody person who “tied electrical cord around the handles . . . to the doors to his bedroom because of his obsessive fear of intruders.”

Parker, the National League’s 1978 most valuable player and a two-time batting champion, played for the Pirates from 1973 through 1983, the last five seasons under the disputed contract. He spent four seasons with the Cincinnati Reds and now plays for the Oakland Athletics.

Parker returned to star status during his four seasons with the Reds, driving in at least 94 runs each year. In 1985, he finished second in the MVP voting after hitting .312 with 34 home runs and 125 runs batted in.

The Pirates charge:

--Suburban Pittsburgh police seized drug paraphernalia--including water pipes, cocaine spoons and mirrors and a leather-over-silver cigarette case with a marijuana leaf embossed on the front--while investigating a reported burglarly at Parker’s home in March 1979.

--Parker not only brought his drug-dealing friends into the clubhouse, where they sold cocaine to other teammates, he also introduced them to other National League players. That led to Parker and opposing players snorting cocaine together in hotel rooms before games.

Among the players listed by the Pirates as potential witnesses are Gary Alexander, Dale Berra, Rod Scurry, Lee Lacy, Larry Demery, Dock Ellis, Bill Madlock, Lee Mazzilli, John Milner, Pascual Perez, Tim Raines, Manny Sarmiento, Willie Stargell and Derrel Thomas. In the 1985 federal drug trial of convicted dealer Curtis Strong, Parker testified he shared cocaine with or arranged to have the drug supplied to Berra, Scurry, Lacy, Sarmiento and Thomas.

--Parker used cocaine not only in hotel rooms and his home, but in cars and airplanes with former girlfriends. He also snorted coke while drinking acohol or smoking marijuana.

--Parker concealed his drug usage from the team and denied having a drug problem when questioned by Reich and Landman after the 1979 burglarly incident and, again, after a check by Parker to drug dealer Shelby Greer was somehow delivered to Reich’s office.

Cindrich said the agents had no legal obligation to report their suspicions to the Pirates because, “I don’t think there is any question that your duty is to your client and to protect his interests . . . acting otherwise would be a breach of duty actionable by the player against his representative.”

There is legal precedence to rule in the Pirates’ behalf, including a court decision upholding the Utah Jazz’s suspension of Bernard King without pay after he was arrested on drug charges, Cindrich said.

A clause in Parker’s 1979 contract states, “The player agrees . . . to keep himself in first-class physical condition and to obey the club’s training rules.” Another clause states, “The player represents that he has no physical or mental defects known to him and unknown to . . . the club which would prevent or impair performance of his services.”

“This is not a personal vendetta,” said Pirates’ President Carl Barger. “But this is serious stuff. We don’t feel we should pay him the money.”