#CardCorner: 1982 Topps Dick Davis
Hall of Fame staffers are also baseball fans and love to share their stories. Here is a fan's perspective from Cooperstown.
The gray 1979 Volkswagen Scirocco slithered into our driveway like a panther, pulsating power and speed.
It belonged to a customer at my father’s car repair shop, conveniently located at our home in Northeast Ohio.
But this was no ordinary customer: This was Dick Davis, or so I was told.
But I was convinced of an entirely different reality. And it played out via my baseball cards.
Davis emerged from the car, a towering, bearded African-American gentleman who always took the time to talk to me when I encountered him. I was 13 years old and had just finished seventh grade, and he was a regular at my father’s shop – bringing in what seemed to be a vast array of performance cars that never quite ran right.
To my father’s chagrin, Mr. Davis liked to stick around while his cars were being repaired. But with no real waiting room in our four-place garage, Davis would sometimes pass the hours in our house.
This day, I invited him to help me as I sorted some of my new baseball cards. And at the same time, I figured I’d discover his secret identity.
Being an uber-fan at that age, I had heard of Dick Davis the baseball player. A multi-talented outfielder who emerged as a top Brewers prospect in the mid-1970s, Davis was a consistent hitter for Milwaukee in his first four big league seasons. But with Ben Oglivie, Gorman Thomas and Sixto Lezcano blocking his way in the outfield, the Brewers traded Davis to the Phillies on March 1, 1981, in exchange for pitcher Randy Lerch.
He hit .333 for Philadelphia in the strike-shortened 1981 season, and Topps put him on one of their great 1982 offerings that featured the cool stripes, a simulated autograph and detailed reverse-side info.
But I knew that Dick Davis the customer was not Dick Davis the Phillies outfielder. No… I was convinced that Dick Davis was actually Dave Parker.
Yes, that Dave Parker – the 6-foot-5 Pirates superstar outfielder who was one of my childhood heroes.
This leap of logic was not quite as preposterous as it might seem. At the time, my father was regularly maintaining the Ferrari owned by San Francisco 49ers owner Edward DeBartolo Jr., who lived in nearby Youngstown. Yet we never saw Eddie, who always had others deliver and pick up the car.
So why not Dave Parker? And why not a pseudonym, so no one would know he was there? Parker was, after all, one of the game’s biggest stars. Surely he wouldn’t want a mob scene when he had his car repaired.
As conspiracy theories go, this one ranked right up there with Big Foot and Amelia Earhart.
Eventually, however, I began to question the plausibility of this hypothesis – especially when the Pirates and Parker played a day game on another afternoon when Davis stopped by. Even I couldn’t argue with the basic laws of time and space.
But I have fond memories of thumbing through those cards with that gentle giant, thrilled that he was maintaining interest – whether feigned or not. For a child, little means more than simple time and attention from an adult. And thanks to a 13-year-old’s imagination, Dick Davis the customer, and Dick Davis the Phillies outfielder, live on today in Cooperstown.
Craig Muder is the director of communications for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
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