Clarence Parker

Clarence McKay Parker was born in Portsmouth on May 17, 1912, and played at Duke under Wallace Wade, one of college football’s best-known coaches in a previous stint at Alabama. He signed with the Philadelphia Athletics out of college, and Connie Mack, the team’s owner and manager, converted him to an infielder. Parker played for the A’s during the 1937 and 1938 seasons. He had also been a second-round draft pick of the Brooklyn Dodgers of the N.F.L. in 1937, and he left the Athletics in the late summer of his baseball seasons to attend football training camp. He hit a home run in his first major league plate appearance, but after batting .179 in 94 games over two seasons, he put the major leagues behind him for good. After five seasons with the football Dodgers, Parker served in the Navy during World War II, then joined the N.F.L.’s Boston Yanks in 1945. He helped take the New York Yankees of the new All America Football Conference to an Eastern Division title in 1946. Parker returned to Duke after that and became the football team’s offensive backfield coach and the head baseball coach.