William David Parker (January 14, 1942 – February 9, 2003) was a professional

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

player who played parts of three seasons for the

California Angels The Los Angeles Angels are an American professional baseball team based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Angels compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) West division. Since 1966, the team ha ...

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

. He is the first player to hit a walk-off homer in his major league debut, doing so on September 9, 1971 for the Angels. Parker's professional baseball career began in 1961 with the

Negro league The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams of African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latin Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be ...

Indianapolis Clowns The Indianapolis Clowns were a professional baseball team in the Negro American League. Tracing their origins back to the 1930s, the Clowns were the last of the Negro league teams to disband, continuing to play exhibition games into the 1980s. The ...

, where he played through 1964. He was selected by the

New York Yankees The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the Boroughs of New York City, New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Amer ...

from the

Salt Lake City Angels Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quantiti ...

in the Rule 5 draft on December 3, 1973.Durso, Joseph. "4 Trades Made at Meetings," ''The New York Times'', Tuesday, December 4, 1973.
Retrieved January 26, 2023.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Parker, Billy 1947 births 2003 deaths African-American baseball players Águilas Cibaeñas players American expatriate baseball players in the Dominican Republic American expatriate baseball players in Mexico Arizona Instructional League Angels players Baseball players from Alabama California Angels players El Paso Sun Kings players Indianapolis Clowns players Major League Baseball second basemen People from Hayneville, Alabama People from Sun City West, Arizona Baseball players from Maricopa County, Arizona Plataneros de Tabasco players Salt Lake City Angels players Sultanes de Monterrey players Syracuse Chiefs players Tiburones de La Guaira players American expatriate baseball players in Venezuela 20th-century African-American sportspeople