Aug 5, 2017 5 min read

The Steelers did the right thing with Mike Tomlin.

They announced Friday that his contract had been extended through the 2020 season. Nothing new here for the Steelers. They like to keep their coaches and they like to keep their coaches happy by extending their contracts.

Prior to the 2015 season, you might have been able to make a case that the Steelers should be starting to look around for a new head coach. Tomlin had gone four years without winning a playoff game and if he hadn’t won one in 2015, it would have been the first time the Steelers had gone five years without a postseason win since the dark days before Chuck Noll showed up.

The Steelers’ last two playoff losses have been to Super Bowl winners, Denver and New England.

There are plenty of Steelers fans who aren’t happy with Tomlin getting a new contract but they need to be realistic. You don’t fire a coach who just lost to the Patriots in the AFC Championship game without his most productive offensive player.

The biggest criticism of Tomlin – and it’s legitimate – is that he has lost too many games to teams that had no business beating the Steelers. For a while, there were legitimate questions about his ability to win with players that he didn’t inherit from Bill Cowher, but not any more.

Ben Roethlisberger and James Harrison are the only players on the current roster who have played in a Super Bowl. Tomlin hired Todd Haley to be his offensive coordinator and Mike Munchak to coach his offensive line and he might have the NFL’s best offense this season.

Neither Tomlin nor Bill Cowher would have sniffed a Super Bowl if not for Roethlisberger, but you could say that about any head coach and his franchise quarterback.

Tomlin has taken his team to the Super Bowl twice and won once and, in 10 years, he’s never had a losing season. He went to the AFC Championship game last season.

Not giving an extension to an NFL head coach with that kind of a record would be idiotic.

• It’s time to put Dave Parker in the Baseball Hall of Fame. I came to that conclusion while watching a story about him Friday night on “Inside Pirates Baseball.”

I’ve always been on the fence with Parker’s worthiness but after listening to what his former teammates and opponents said about him, and after going over his records and comparing him to other players already in Cooperstown, I think he deserves it. If not for getting fat and partying too much with the cocaine-happy Pirates of the early 1980s, Parker would have been a slam dunk on his first try.

He was, and still is, one of the most underappreciated athletes in Pittsburgh history and he had his enemies long before he got fat and run out of town.

He had the nerve to become the first $1-million-a-year professional athlete in American history in 1977 and, for some reason that didn’t go over well with a lot of fans, some of whom expressed themselves by throwing batteries at him from the right-field stands.

I remember doing a TV commentary about Parker during the 1978 season. He was the most feared hitter in baseball and a Gold Glove right fielder who was often booed at Three Rivers Stadium and ripped by radio talk show callers. I asked what is there not to like about the guy? I think I mentioned that I had never heard him say a bad word about the Pirates. I also pointed out that I had never seem him, including on a one-hopper back to the pitcher, not run full speed to first base.

Interestingly enough, his teammates said the same thing on “Inside Pirates Baseball,” with emphasis on the word never.

Roberto Clemente and Pete Rose are the only other players that I can say that about.

Parker doesn’t have the automatic entry numbers like 3,000 hits or 500 home runs, but he had more than 2,700 hits and averaged 22 home runs and 98 RBI and hit .290 for 19 years. He also has two World Series rings, one of which he won in 1989 with the Oakland A’s when he was 38. He hit 22 home runs and drove in 97 as a DH.

After he left the Pirates and got his career back on track, Parker was one of the best hitters in baseball. In 1985, with the Reds, he batted .325 with 34 home runs and 125 RBI. The next year it was 31, 116 and .273.

His career numbers are comparable to Orlando Cepeda’s, who was elected by the veterans committee in 1997. Parker was a better player than former Phillies outfielder Richie Ashburn in every way. Ashburn was put in by the veterans in 1995.

Parker was loud and loved to speak loudly about himself. He could be intimidating, but most of it was an act and he was just having fun.

Maybe that and his association with the Pittsburgh drug trial turned off too many Hall of Fame voters, but there are plenty of players in Cooperstown who were not as good Dave Parker.

It’s time to put him in.

John Steigerwald writes a Sunday column for the Observer-Reporter.