#CardCorner: 1970 Topps Wes Parker

Wes Parker was a six-time Gold Glove Award winner who played in two World Series, taking home a ring as a member of the 1965 Los Angeles Dodgers.

But for generations of fans who watched the ABC sitcom The Brady Bunch, Parker was the fiancé of Greg Brady’s math teacher. And for millions of those viewers, Parker will be forever remembered for that one moment in time.

Parker, however, was so much more that a screen credit on one of the most re-run television shows in history.

Born Maurice Wesley Parker III on Nov. 13, 1939, in Evanston, Ill., Parker moved with his family to Southern California as a boy. His father prospered in business and real estate, and Parker attended the prestigious Harvard Military Academy – now Harvard-Westlake School – in Los Angeles.

Parker was not considered a pro prospect and enrolled at Claremont-Mudd College – a school that did not grant athletic scholarships and is now Claremont McKenna College – following prep school. He was named to the NAIA All-Star squad in 1961 after hitting .402 with a 1.90 ERA on the mound, then transferred to the University of Southern California – but did not play baseball at USC.

“I had three choices (after graduation),” Parker told the Associated Press. “I could have gone to work for my father, I could have been set up in business with a friend of dad’s or I could have taught history in school. But I wanted to go into something for myself. And I liked baseball best.”

Parker contacted Charlie Dressen, the former Dodgers manager in Brooklyn and then a scout for the team who was a friend of Parker’s father.

“Dressen didn’t even recognize me,” Parker told the AP. “I had to introduce myself all over again. He was reluctant to recommend me, but I finally talked him into it. I had to sign for nothing.”

The Dodgers assigned the 23-year-old Parker to Class A Santa Barbara of the California League in 1963, and Parker did well against players who were on the average a year-and-a-half younger – hitting .305 in 92 games. He was promoted to Double-A Albuquerque at the end of the season, and he hit .350 there in Texas League play with 36 hits in 26 games.

Parker’s remarkable first season in pro ball earned him an invitation to Spring Training with the Dodgers – the defending World Series champions – in 1964. He soon began blistering balls in the Grapefruit League and showing off his smooth fielding skills at first base.

 “Parker has progressed beyond the spot where you could say he got off to a lucky start,” Dodgers manager Walter Alston told the Los Angeles Times during Spring Training of 1964. “He could be the real article.”

Parker made the Dodgers’ Opening Day roster and spent the season as a bench player, appearing in 124 games – the majority of which came in the outfield. He batted .257 with three homers and 10 RBI while totaling just 240 plate appearances as Ron Fairly got the bulk of the playing time at first base. The Dodgers failed to repeat as National League champions, however, and the team shook up the lineup in the offseason – trading power hitting outfielder Frank Howard to the Senators in a multi-player deal where the main return was pitcher Claude Osteen. Alston then moved Fairly to right field and installed Parker at first base on Opening Day 1965.

Batting out of the No. 2 hole for much of the season, the switch-hitting Parker patiently took pitches to allow Maury Wills space on the basepaths. Wills swiped 94 bases and Parker hit .238 with 75 walks, 80 runs scored and 51 RBI in 154 games as Los Angeles once again won the NL pennant.

In the World Series against the Twins, Parker started every game at first base and recorded hits in five of them – including an RBI single in the third inning of Game 7 that scored Fairly to give the Dodgers a 2-0 lead. It was more than enough for starter Sandy Koufax, who shut out Minnesota as Los Angeles won 2-0 to capture the franchise’s fourth Fall Classic title.

Parker was hampered by a shoulder injury throughout the 1965 season. To address the situation, Parker turned to weight training in the offseason – an unusual approach in an era where many in baseball felt weightlifting produced “muscle-bound” players who lacked agility.

“I’m feeling bigger and stronger – just the way I wanted to be,” Parker told the Pasadena Independent during Spring Training of 1966. “I haven’t noticed any stiffness or handicap reaching for balls.”

Parker’s batting average improved to .253 in 1966, and he totaled 12 home runs, 51 RBI and 69 walks in 156 games. The Dodgers repeated as NL champions – but the World Series was a different matter, as Baltimore swept Los Angeles. Parker had three hits in 13 at-bats in what would be the final postseason games of his MLB career.

Parker worked on his hitting in Spring Training in 1967 with Dodgers legend Duke Snider, who was a special instructor for the team.

“Any player can benefit from special instruction,” Snider told the Los Angeles Times. “Back in (1948), I didn’t have the faintest idea of where the strike zone was. We were training in the Dominican Republic, and I was sent back to Dodgertown. For hours, I worked in the batting cage while Branch Rickey and George Sisler sat behind me and gave me pointers. They made me into a major league hitter. Wes has the tools to be one, too.

“We’ve got to make an animal out of Wes at the plate. He shouldn’t go up there and exchange pleasantries with the catcher. He should go up there and tell the guy to go to hell.”

Parker hit .247 in 1967 and followed up with a .239 mark in 1968 as pitching became dominant throughout the game. But after Koufax retired following the 1966 season, the Dodgers no longer had the top rotation in baseball – and Los Angeles suffered through back-to-back losing campaigns, their first consecutive sub-.500 seasons since 1937-38.

But 1967 marked Parker’s first Gold Glove Award – an honor he would receive in each of his final six big league seasons. In 1968, Parker was charged with just one error at first base in 1,009 chances – a miscue that snapped a string of 101 straight errorless games and came on a ball hit by Houston’s Norm Miller on July 30 that many felt should have been ruled a hit when it took an unusual bounce off the turf in the Astrodome.

Interestingly, modern defensive metrics are not as impressed as Parker’s peers were with his play in the field. He had a defensive WAR of -1.0 in 1967 and followed that with a -0.4 mark in 1968. For his career, Parker’s defensive WAR was a cumulative -3.0.

In 1969, Parker bounced back at the plate – hitting .278 with 23 doubles, 13 homers, 68 RBI and 56 walks. Then in 1970, Parker had what would be his signature season, hitting .319 with an MLB-best 47 doubles, 10 homers, 111 RBI and 79 walks while playing in an NL-high 161 games (the Dodgers played only 161 games that season). He finished fifth in the NL Most Valuable Player voting despite not earning an All-Star Game berth.

Parker hit for the cycle on May 7, 1970, vs. the Mets.

It was “about the biggest thrill I’ve ever had in baseball,” Parker told the Associated Press about the cycle. “I just missed doing it against Cincinnati two years ago. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”

Parker attributed his breakout season to a rededication to the game and to work with coach Dixie Walker, who was the last Dodgers hitter prior to Parker with 100-or-more RBI and 10-or-fewer home runs in a season, having reached that mark in 1946.

Parker was also the first NL switch-hitter in 35 years to tally at least 100 RBI, with Ripper Collins of St. Louis reaching the 100-RBI plateau for the Cardinals in 1935. The only other switch-hitter to record a 100-RBI season in that span was Mickey Mantle, who did it four times.

“I’m getting married,” Parker, a bachelor, said prior to the 1970 season, “to baseball.”

But on the small screen, Parker was engaged. He played himself on a first-season episode of The Brady Bunch that ran on Jan. 30, 1970, where he was engaged to Greg Brady’s mathematics teacher. Parker was one of several athletes who appeared on episodes of The Brady Bunch, including Deacon Jones, Joe Namath and Don Drysdale. It would be an appearance that would launch Parker’s second career when his days on the diamond were over.

Parker also became the Dodgers’ player representative, a role that became increasingly important as tensions between the union and management began to rise. Parker hit .274 with six home runs and 62 RBI in 1971. Then in 1972, the union voted to go on strike at the start of the season – the first work stoppage in modern history.

Parker abstained from the vote that authorized the players to go on strike, becoming the only member of the players voting committee that did not vote in favor of the strike.

“You have to look at this thing from management’s side, too,” Parker told the Los Angeles Times. “You have to put yourself in the owners’ shoes.”

When the season resumed in mid-April, Parker put together what was an average campaign for him: Hitting .279 with four home runs and 59 RBI in 130 games while winning his sixth straight Gold Glove Award. It was also Parker’s sixth season leading all NL first basemen in fielding percentage.

Parker retired following the 1972 season despite the Dodgers’ efforts to bring him back. He then worked as a broadcaster for the Reds before returning as an active player with the Nankai Hawks of the Japan Pacific League in 1974. He hit .301 with 14 homers and 59 RBI in 127 games for the Hawks – winning the Diamond Glove Award at first base – before retiring again, this time turning his attention to acting.

He enrolled in an actors’ school and began auditioning, landing spots in commercials and then winning one-off spots on shows like Emergency!, Matt Helm and McMillan & Wife. In 1977, he was cast in the Norman Lear soap opera spoof All That Glitters as Glen Bankston, appearing in three episodes.

“I went from doing three or four lines to doing 10 pages of dialogue a day,” Parker told Knight-Ridder Newspapers. “But I knew how lucky I was to get that role. And I loved doing it.”

Parker received positive notice for the role but the syndicated show was canceled after one season. Parker continued to act throughout the 1970s then returned to baseball broadcasting, working for NBC and then USA Network, which helped pioneer national MLB games on cable in the early 1980s before MLB signed a new deal with ABC and NBC heading into the 1984 season.

He finished his nine-year MLB career with a .267 batting average, 1,110 hits and a .351 on-base percentage. Only Keith Hernandez (11), Don Mattingly (nine), George Scott (eight), Vic Power (seven) and Bill White (seven) have won more Gold Glove Awards at first base than Parker.

But as long as the story of a man named Brady continues to be told, Wes Parker will always be known for more than baseball.

“Sometimes I think how nice it would be to get a big hit, to hear the roar of the crowd,” Parker told Knight-Ridder Newspapers in 1977 when he was engrossed in his acting career. “But I don’t miss the travel, and I don’t miss the pressure. Especially the pressure – from the fans, the owner, the media, the manager. Those pressures are what take the sport out of baseball.”

Craig Muder is the director of communications for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum