Dave Parker, cut by California last week after losing his stroke at age 40, signed Saturday with the Toronto Blue Jays for the final three weeks of the season.
Parker will not be eligible for the postseason if the Blue Jays make it that far. Toronto took a 31/2-game lead in the AL East into Saturday's play.Parker was batting only .232 with 11 home runs and 56 RBIs in 119 games for the Angels, who got him from Milwaukee in a trade during spring training.
On Wednesday, Blue Jays general manager Pat Gillick said he wasn't interested in Parker. But Gillick changed his mind, and Parker will join the Blue Jays on Sunday for the finale of a three-game series at home against Oakland.
"We decided: `Why not?' " Gillick said. "He's intimidating and with him sitting on the bench, the manager on the other side may change his pitching strategy."
The 6-foot-5 Parker is a veteran of almost 18 major-league seasons, five league championship series and three World Series.
Asked how Parker will be used, Gillick said: "That's up to (interim manager) Gene (Tenace)."
Parker has 339 career homers and 1,490 RBIs with five different clubs - Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Oakland, Milwaukee and Oakland. The seven-time All-Star hit a pair of homers and drove in three runs for Oakland when the A's beat the Blue Jays in the 1989 AL championship series.
The veteran DH traded words in the media after Toronto third baseman Kelly Gruber said Parker's snail-like home-run trots were blatant examples of showboating. Parker responded to Gruber's comments by saying he'd been using the same trot since Gruber was a youngster, and also wondered aloud whether Gruber was an expert on baseball etiquette and said he wasn't going to shift gears for anyone.
Gruber, the co-author of "Kelly: At Home on Third," quipped recently that he had put together his book of etiquette and hoped Parker would read it.