At 40, Parker Thrives on Proving the Critics Wrong : Angels: He’s not having a great season, but outfielder says he plans to play a couple more years.

Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully once said that it’s a mere moment in a man’s life between an All-Star game and an old-timers game.

Dave Parker, an All-Star with the Milwaukee Brewers last season, turns 40 today and is batting .198, which is 95 percentage points below his .293 career average.

There is no shortage of people who think they could be seeing the end of a career that spans 19 seasons and includes two World Series championships.

But Parker, full of friendly swagger, dares anyone to think he is finished at 40.

“I thrive off it,” he said. “They’ve said I was through before.”

Parker will celebrate the beginning of his fifth decade as few men are privileged to--in a major league uniform and probably by batting cleanup, where Angel Manager Doug Rader has kept him despite his struggles.

“That just shows he’s got confidence in me,” Parker said. “He still knows I can play.”

The Angels play Detroit this afternoon, and Parker said that afterward, he perhaps will seek out some of his former Milwaukee teammates who are in town to play the Angels beginning Monday. It is all as he likely would have planned it, except for the season statistics that will follow his name.

A year after shrugging off doubters by hitting .289 with 21 home runs and 92 runs batted in for the Brewers, Parker is trying to break out of what he says has been the longest, most persistent slump of his career.

“I think other people are deciding maybe I’m done,” Parker said. “As a player, you know yourself. I still have my bat speed. I’m not striking out, I’m making contact. I’ll be right there at the end of the year.”

Parker probably takes no greater pride than in proving his doubters wrong, as he has done again and again in the major leagues, from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati to Oakland to Milwaukee. He likes to say, with matter-of-fact sarcasm, “Yeah, I’ve been through since I was 30.”

Now he is awaiting the next time he will confound the naysayers. He makes one point: To those who have left the fold, farewell.

“All the people who have sold me off and say I’m through, I don’t want them to come back,” he said. “If you boo me, continue to boo me. I hate fair-weather people. That bothers me more than anything.”

It’s not that Parker has not begun to think about the end of his career or acknowledged that it is near. It is only that he does not think this is it.

“Right now, it’s just another birthday,” Parker said. “I feel good. I plan on playing a couple more years after this year, then I’ll start thinking retirement.

“I’m pretty well off to be 40 years old,” he said. “I think basically I’ve lost a step or two on my speed. I feel the same. I’ve maintained the same look all through my 30s. I’ve seen a lot of guys around who aren’t so well off. I’m playing this game at the highest levels, I have no anxieties. A lot of people didn’t make it to 40.”

He sees signs that he is going to break out of the struggle that has been the first two months of the season. Last week, when he homered for only the third time, he was met at the plate with an embrace from Dave Winfield, a man he says he admires as much as anyone he has played with. Winfield, who will turn 40 on Oct. 3, has emerged from an early-season slump and has raised his average to .275 and is leading the team with 11 home runs and 41 RBIs.

“The thing I’ve started doing is having some fun, not listening to the response of some of these fair-weather people who come to the ballpark,” Parker said. “I’ve got to be animated at the plate, have fun. If this is my last year--and I don’t think it is--I want to have all the fun possible.”

Parker’s intent is to play through 1993. With 2,631 hits, he is chasing 3,000, a number that would give him a measure of immortality. If he could reach 400 home runs--probably a long shot, since he has 331--he could join Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Stan Musial and Carl Yastrzemski as the only players to reach both marks.

“Within the next two or three years, this year and two more, I want to get 3,000 hits,” Parker said. “What I’m playing for is personal goals. I’m financially secure, I’m very happy, I have a nice home and no bills. This is what I want for myself. My whole career has been sacrificing myself to an extent for other players. Now I want to receive personal satisfaction for all the things I experienced and went through.”

One of the most difficult things in baseball is choosing the right time to leave the game. Few retire as Sandy Koufax or Ted Williams did, with images of their greatness still intact. Parker knows that.

“A hurtful thing was playing against Willie Mays in his later years,” said Parker, who was a rookie with the Pirates in 1973 when Mays hit .211 while closing his career with the New York Mets. “At that point he’d lost his arm, and you’d see people running on Willie.”

Parker shakes his head at the thought.

“Richie Zisk (a good-hitting but slow-footed Pirate teammate) would tag on Willie Mays. What did Richie Zisk run the 100 in, about a day? And he was running on Willie Mays?”

The way Parker would like to go out is with the kind of seasons he has had in recent years, such as he had for the Athletics or the Brewers, when he ranked among the league leaders in some categories. He is always in favor of defying age or popular opinion.

“I like the way Willie Stargell went out,” he said, recalling another Pirate teammate. “They didn’t want to give Stargell a contract after ‘78, but I made it clear I wanted Stargell. He goes out and has his best year, and they didn’t even want him. I like the way Willie went out. I think Joe Morgan went out fairly well, too. He went out with a bang. I liked the way Pete Rose went out, going from city to city, and everybody had a chance to say goodby.”

But Parker says his own farewell is not in sight.

“I know I can still play,” he said. “I’ll play with the Angels this year, maybe next year. I’m going to be playing somewhere.”

But he won’t hang on forever, he says, not with a family to spend time with and no financial concerns to prod him into sticking around.

“I’m never going to be the type of guy to sit on the bench, the type who plays once every six or seven days,” Parker said.

As for this year, it isn’t half over--and Parker says he isn’t through.

“I’m going to be a productive player this year. They said I was done in ’82. I’m still here. I’ve got staying power.”

The Race to 3,000

Only 16 men in major league history have 3,000 or more hits, one of the remaining goals of the Angels’ Dave Parker. He and teammate Dave Winfield are two of four active players closing in on the coveted number:

Player Team Years Games Hits Robin Yount Milwaukee 18 2,502 2,803 George Brett Kansas City 19 2,306 2,734 Dave Parker Angels 19 2,384 2,631 Dave Winfield Angels 19 2,449 2,600