Cobra: A Life of Baseball and Brotherhood

Dave Parker was one of the biggest and most badass baseball players of the late twentieth century. He was a seven-time All-Star, a two-time batting champion, a three-time Gold Glove winner, the 1978 National League MVP, and a World Series champion with both the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Oakland A’s. Here the great Dave Parker delivers his wild and long-awaited autobiography--an authoritative account of Black baseball during its heyday as seen through the eyes of none other than the Cobra.

Cobra is the story of a Black athlete making his way through the game during a time of major social and cultural transformation. From the racially integrated playing fields of his high school days to the cookie-cutter cathedrals of his prime alongside all the midseason and late-night theatrics that accompany an athlete’s life on the road--Parker offers readers a glimpse of all that and everything in between.

Parker recounts the triumphant victories and the heartbreaking defeats, both on and off the field. He recalls the complicated politics of spring training, the early stages of the free agency era, and the notorious 1985 drug trials. Paying tribute to the enduring power of relationships between players, Parker tells an epic tale of friendship, success, indulgence, and redemption, but most of all, family. Cobra is the unforgettable story of a million-dollar athlete just before baseball became a billion-dollar game.

Dave Parker played nineteen seasons in the Major Leagues and was the first million-dollar-per-year player. He lives in Ohio, where he has created the Dave Parker 39 Foundation, an organization focused on finding a cure for Parkinson’s disease. Dave Jordan is a writer and filmmaker living in New Jersey. He has written for Sporting News, SB Nation, and the Hardball Times, and he is the coauthor (with John D’Acquisto) of Fastball John.