Untimely

 Sometimes the world is a cold, cold place, and, well, surprise, surprise, surprise. You want fair, the county's got one. Comes around every summer, or so I hear.

In the meantime, let us contemplate the life of Dave Parker.

Which ended the other day after 74 years, and wasn't that a hell of thing. Back in the day, see, they called him the Cobra, and he was a 6-foot-5 specimen of humanity who sent baseballs on some prodigious rides. In 19 seasons in the majors -- 11 of them with the stately Pittsburgh Pirates before they devolved into the laugh-a-minute Cruds -- he hit 339 homers, drove in 1,493 runs and won back-to-back NL batting titles in 1977 and '78.

He also won two World Series rings -- one with the Buccos in '79, and one with the Oakland A's ten years later.

Those '79 Pirates, of course, are who I remember best. That was the "We Are Fam-a-lee" bunch, and they were something to see in those silly pillbox caps of theirs. They had Pops Stargell as a kind of Father Christmas, and the young Cobra, and a skinny, bespectacled reliever named Kent Tekulve who threw a mean submarine ball but looked more like nerdy prey for the school bully.

He might ring you up, or he might get his lunch money stolen and his books kicked into the gutter. Always looked like even-money one or the other.

Anyway, Dave Parker has left all that, and here comes the cold, cold part: In not much more than a month, he was scheduled to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Now someone else will give his acceptance speech, and the Cobra will be helpless to do anything but watch from somewhere beyond the mortal coil.

I don't know how much more unfair the world can get than that. Or how much more untimely a death can be.

I also don't know how the people who vote for the Hall of Fame can be more addle-pated, because this on them. Had they voted in Parker years ago the way they should have, he'd have still been around to thank everyone. But of course they horse-assed around until he was an old man, and (as it turned out) too late.

Shame on those chumps.

And here's to the Cobra, swingin' for the fences in the Great Beyond. May the current cheapo Pirates ownership un-padlock its wallet and put up a statue of the man to join Pops, Roberto and Honus Wagner standing silent vigil outside PNC Park.