Parker Has No Time for Sour Grapes

The baseball cap covering his shaved head read “Bacio Divino,” not “Loser.” The title of the book he brought with him was “1831,” not “0-4.”

Glenn Parker showed up for his meet-the-press hour clad in sweatshirt and pants, not sack cloth, a major disappointment to those panting writers hovering around Parker’s table, eager to swoop in for the easy angle.

Parker, a New York Giant offensive guard, previously spent seven seasons with the Buffalo Bills, four that ended in Super Bowl defeats. He was there when Scott Norwood sailed wide right. He watched Mark Rypien rain touchdown passes inside the Metrodome. He couldn’t keep Cowboys from climbing all over Jim Kelly in Pasadena and Atlanta.

Four times in four years, Parker went to football’s biggest game, played, struggled, bled and lost.

He has since gotten on with his life.

He thinks it’s about time everyone else did the same.

“Anybody can place a tag on someone else,” Parker says. “I am not defined by the fact I lost four Super Bowls. Football is a small part of my life. When I’m done, you won’t see me around football. You might see me broadcasting, but I’m not going to be one of those guys wearing my Super Bowl rings or my championship rings or whatever. I’m not going to do that. I think it’s ridiculous.

“I’m first and foremost a father and a husband. And after that, some other things. Football’s way down the list.”

The list, at a glance:

Harley-Davidson enthusiast.

Cooking aficionado with published recipes to his credit.

Voracious reader with a taste for Thomas McGuane, Larry McMurtry, Hunter Thompson and Raymond Chandler.

Wine collector and connoisseur with a home wine cellar stocked with 3,000 bottles--the man to see if you’re a New York Giant prepping for a big dinner date.

“They come to me and ask, ‘Hey, I’m going to dinner, what should I get to drink?’ ” Parker says. “They say, ‘Can I come over and taste some wine?’ And I say, ‘Sure.’ ”

That’s not quite the image Coach Jim Fassel has carefully forged for his team: The blue-collar, lunch-bucket, punch-the-clock New York Giants, getting together after a hard day’s practice to sit cross-legged in front of the hearth, nibbling brie and swirling a robust cabernet in a crystal glass to see if it has legs.

Ah, yes, Lomas, my good man, let us now volatilize the esters, shall we?

In between questions about how to cope with the Baltimore Ravens’ blitz and the importance of establishing the run, Parker conducted a free wine-tasting seminar for the benefit of the dozen or so writers huddled around his table.

“The first thing you want to do, you want to take a look at the wine’s color,” Parker said. “You want to look to see if it’s clear, if it’s crystal, not murky or fuzzy in color. Because that’ll tell you the wine has turned somewhat.

“Give it a swirl. That’s called ‘volatilizing the esters.’ Which means, basically, that you’re breaking it open so you can smell it. If it’s smelling good, you say, ‘Hey, that’s got some things’ and you’re thinking about what you’re smelling.

“A lot of people tell you when you swirl, look at the legs. That’s the dripping down the sides of the glass. That will tell you about the viscosity of the wine or the body of the wine. A lot of people say they can tell quality by looking at that, but I don’t think that’s always the case. You can have good wine without good legs.

“Then you take a good sip in your mouth. You want a nice big sip. You don’t want one of these little tiny sips. Whenever I hear people say, ‘Oh, I get heartburn from red wine’ or ‘It doesn’t taste good to me,’ that’s because they’re taking little tiny sips and all they’re getting is a variation of alcohol down their throat. They’re not tasting wine.”

The writers at the table nodded as they scribbled. This was information that might prove useful in their lives, unlike anything gathered from the hour they had spent with Tony Siragusa.

“When it’s in your mouth,” Parker continued, “make sure you swish it around, to all the different places that taste--maybe breathe out a little bit before you swallow so that the aroma goes to the back to the olfactory sense of your nose because that’s where all of your smell is. Then you’ll taste it, you’ll smell it and there you go.”

Someone asked Parker how he developed his interest in wine.

“I love beer,” he said. “Beer is what got me into wine in the first place. The microbrewery movement in California was so big, it really hadn’t hit the rest of the country, and I was trying quality beers--beers that had flavor and body to them. And someone mentioned, ‘If you like that, you’re going to love wine.’ I said, ‘That’s for snobby people, I’m not into wine.’ ”

Parker grinned.

“Gradually, as one matures, one gets more discretionary income, one becomes snobby and likes wine.”

Parker, 34, has spent the past two off-seasons interning at the Robert Mondavi winery in Napa Valley, and will return after this Super Bowl. He conducts tours, teaching restaurant and hotel owners about the nuances of fine wines, and hopes one day to have his own label.

His favorite wines?

“I’m a California cab drinker, as well as Bordeaux,” Parker said. “I’m starting to be educated a little more in Burgundies, so I’m trying to get into that.”

How about merlot?

Parker stopped grinning. It was as if someone had asked a connoisseur of offensive football what he thought about the Ravens.

“Well, merlot is simply a varietal,” he said, dismissively. “There are a few California merlots that are nice, but I wouldn’t say I love merlot.”

This is serious stuff to Parker, because he believes this is his life after football.

“I swore when I got to this point, I wasn’t going to be a football player who was broke when he was done,” he said. “A lot of guys go into broadcasting, or stockbroking, or banking. I can’t do that. So I said, ‘Get me into a winery.’ ”

He has also made pragmatic choices with his football career, moving from Kansas City to New York as a free agent last winter, not for the chance to return to the Super Bowl, but, as he put it, because the Giants “paid me more money than anybody else. They offered the most money. I said, ‘I’ll take it. . . . ‘

“I thought it was funny at the time when Reggie White said God told him to go to Green Bay. It just so happened Green Bay paid him the most money of anybody else. God’s got good economic policy.”

As perks go, however, Parker didn’t mind a surprise trip to the Super Bowl.

“Some people are always going to look at it and say, ‘You lost four Super Bowls,’ but that’s a tag put on you by sports fans, not society,” he said. “Go out in the middle of the street and ask the average Joe who won the last Super Bowl. He couldn’t tell you, he wouldn’t know.

“Football is a minute part of this world. I’m sure there are people in New Guinea right now that don’t have a clue who’s playing in the Super Bowl right now or why or who Glenn Parker is and what he’s done. And that’s fine by me. I like it that way.”

But should that first Super Bowl victory come Sunday, Parker has his eye on a certain wine, a special vintage, with which to celebrate.

“The champagne in the locker room,” he said. “I’ve watched it roll out four times. I want to drink it this time.”

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Not So Super Days

Glenn Parker has played in and lost four Super Bowls:

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No. Year Site Result XXV 1991 Tampa, Fla. N.Y. Giants (NFC) 20, Buffalo (AFC) 19 XXVI 1992 Minneapolis Washington (NFC) 37, Buffalo (AFC) 24 XXVII 1993 Pasadena Dallas (NFC) 52, Buffalo (AFC) 17 XXVIII 1994 Atlanta Dallas (NFC) 30, Buffalo (AFC) 13

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