Red Sox Legend Recalls Famous SI Cover With Pirates’ Dave Parker
It’s been nearly 50 years since Jim Rice and the late Dave Parker graced the cover of Sports Illustrated together, but Rice still remembers it fondly.
After winning the MVP awards of their respective leagues in 1978, the two sluggers shared the cover of SI’s baseball preview issue on April 9, 1979. The duo posed back-to-back with Rice looking up at Parker, who had about three inches and 30 pounds on him, under the headline “Who’s best?”
Forty-six years later, the Boston Red Sox legend finally answered that question himself in an interview with The Athletic.
“I guess the idea was, like, who’s best?” Rice told Steve Buckley. “Well, let me tell you, Dave Parker was better. He just was. He was better.”
The two were considered among the best players in baseball during the late 1970s. While Rice was a better hitter, Parker was a superior baserunner, defender and all-around player. He also had more postseason success, winning two World Series rings to Rice’s zero.
“Dave Parker had more tools as far as running and his hitting, and he was stronger,” Rice added. “He was bigger, he was taller, he was better.”
Parker famously got the best of Rice during the 1979 All-Star Game, throwing him out at third base with a stellar throw from right field as Rice tried to stretch a double into a triple. He also cut down a runner at the plate later in the game with another spectacular throw.
Parker, who passed away on Saturday at age 74 due to complications from Parkinson’s disease, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in December and will be inducted posthumously on July 27. Fittingly, he’ll be enshrined in Cooperstown alongside Rice, who was inducted in 2009.
While Rice didn’t get to spend much time with Parker during their brief photoshoot in New York together, his respect, appreciation and admiration for “Cobra” are evident in Buckley’s story.
“Look at my face in the photo,” Rice said. “I’m saying, ‘That’s a big man.’ That’s a big man who could run, a big man who could throw, a big man who could hit. And I see a big man you’d want on your side. That’s what I see when I see that photo.”