These Shots Heard ’Round Frisco

FRISCO, Texas – This Micah Parsons, he sure can put a smile on your face.

Just talking, too, coining all those analogies he did during his NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year season last year.

Now swinging a bat. A baseball bat, one he says he hadn’t swung since the start of his multi-sport high school athletic career centering on football and track.

Maybe his Cowboys teammates here Tuesday night at the Reliant Home Run Derby weren’t paying attention when Parsons stepped into the batting cage to take some pre-derby cuts. He crushed one over the fence. And not the provisional white fence set up maybe 225 feet into the outfield grass at Riders Field in Frisco to create faux home runs during this Salvation Army fundraiser open to the public.

Oh no, this one over the real left field wall, onto the berm, almost leaving the ballpark wall, probably at least 390 feet from home plate. Not a 95 mph fastball mind you. A BP lob, all generated outta here by human power.

So, when the real competition began, after he got someone to come back from a nearby sporting goods store with a brand-spanking new $500 bat, “They said no one has hit it out of the park, and I said, ‘Bro, I just hit a softball 400 feet,'” Parsons said of an earlier exhibition performance in Philadelphia. “This is going to be way easier than that.

“They didn’t believe me.”

“Obviously, we’re competitors, so we made a little bet about it,” QB1 said.

“I believed him,” CeeDee Lamb said, probably convinced by the rookie’s 13-sack season. “I was on his side. It was me and (Trevon Diggs) versus the vets.”

First time up, while Parsons hit eight money-earning home runs for The Salvation Army, at least four of them were Double-A pro ball home runs, one of them travelling a good 400 feet. And with that, he interrupted his first round of swings to trot all the way around the bases.

Good laugh by all, especially his teammates.

Reminded me back to the 1986 NBA All-Star festivities at Reunion Arena in Dallas when in the inaugural…