Davey Lopes Health Battle – How Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s Took a Baseball Legend at 80

His hometown was East Providence, Rhode Island, a bustling waterfront town founded by Portuguese, Irish, and Cape Verdean immigrants seeking factory jobs and a place to settle in the United States. One of twelve kids. When Davey was still a toddler, his father passed away. Mary Rose, his mother, was a domestic worker.

When he was old enough to comprehend his neighborhood, he gave a straightforward description of it: rats, roaches, and drugs that were as ubiquitous as candy. Davey Lopes found the exit door through sport and kept it open for 45 years in a row while playing professional baseball. On April 8, 2026, he passed away in Providence, not far from his birthplace. He was eighty years old and had been moved from a hospice facility where his body had been quietly failing to a hospital in Rhode Island, where he spent his last months fighting both Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.

In the years following his coaching retirement in 2017, Davey Lopez’s health had come under scrutiny, although those closest to him tried to keep the information as secret as possible. The Dodgers were informed of his death by his ex-wife, Lin Lopes; this information carries a quiet weight, implying the kind of familial network that develops around individuals who have led lengthy, complex, and well-traveled lives. The club had been informed by his sister. When the time came, he was surrounded by family in the state where he had grown up. In some way, even though the illnesses that killed him weren’t, that part feels right.

For a man like Lopes, Parkinson’s is cruel in a way that seems almost perversely out of place. This individual used his body as a tool, and his legs in particular were what set him apart. He didn’t appear to be a strong hitter. He was not as physically intimidating as first basemen or corner outfielders, standing five feet nine inches tall and weighing 170 pounds.

He possessed nerve, timing, and an almost supernatural ability to read the movements of a pitcher and go. He was successful on 83% of his attempts to steal 557 career bases. His record of 38 consecutive stolen bases without being caught in 1975 was held until Vince Coleman broke it in 1988. For someone who has spent a career making split-second physical decisions, a disease that gradually impairs motor control and coordination is particularly difficult to deal with.

In September 1972, he made his MLB debut at the age of 27, which was late by the standards of a sport that usually places the highest expectations on its youngest prospects. However, he was carefully developed through a minor league system that was creating something unique after the Dodgers selected him in the 1968 draft. Manager Walter Alston made the audacious decision in 1973 to move Lopes from outfield to second base, where he would join Ron Cey at third, Steve Garvey at first, and Bill Russell at short.

The same quartet went on to start together for eight and a half straight seasons, a record that is still in place in Major League Baseball. The Cubs’ 1960s record of 623 games is the next closest. Garvey, Russell, Cey, and Lopes participated in 833 games together. Such numbers don’t happen by accident. They demand a very uncommon combination of organizational patience, durability, and consistency.

Reading the tributes that followed his passing makes it difficult to ignore how frequently the word “underrated” came up. Garvey was the face, the magazine cover, the attractive first baseman that the cameras adored, while Lopes “may have been the less visible” of the renowned infield, according to former Dodgers president Peter O’Malley. Cey was sturdy and dependable. Russell maintained his composure. The unglamorous math of baserunning was done by Lopes, who batted leadoff behind the pitcher, walked nearly as frequently as he struck out, and purposefully burned time so the pitching staff could rest in between innings. He was an artisan. Lopes probably knew better than most that craftsmanship seldom receives the same attention as spectacle.

He went straight into coaching after his playing career ended in 1987 (he retired at age 42, which speaks volumes about his physical fitness). Before being fired, he oversaw the Milwaukee Brewers from 2000 to 2002, going 144- 195 in three seasons. This type of managerial experience is easily forgotten, but it likely taught him things about the game that success alone would never have taught him. After working as a coach for Baltimore, San Diego, Washington, and Philadelphia, he rejoined the Dodgers as their first-base and baserunning coach from 2011 to 2015. With the 2008 Phillies, he won a second World Series ring while standing in the first-base coach’s box instead of second base. He was older, slower, and probably just as sharp. In 2017, he gave up coaching. 45 years in Major League Baseball in a row. Nearly fifty years.

The final chapter, which dealt with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s at the same time, was challenging in ways that are hard to describe. Both diseases chip away at the self — one at the body’s precision, one at memory and recognition — and together they are a particularly heavy burden. There might still have been happy days, epiphanies, and family nearby. Even close to the end, there frequently are.

What never changed was a record that has never been surpassed, a stolen base percentage that continues to be the Dodgers’ franchise best, and a career based solely on the notion that you could outsmart anyone attempting to stop you. Davey Lopes lived his entire life at full speed, from the streets of East Providence to Dodger Stadium to a hospice in Rhode Island. Without him, baseball moves a little more slowly.