The legend of a Dave Parker homer that may never have touched the ground

At 6-foot-5 and 230 pounds, the late great Hall of Famer Dave Parker was a mountain of a man. His physical largesse was matched only by his larger-than-life personality, which became the stuff of legend.

Take for example one of his many iconic quotes – “When the leaves turn brown, I’ll be wearing the batting crown” – proving prescient when he won back-to-back NL batting titles in 1977 and ’78.

Then there was his signature style, from the earring – nearly unprecedented at the time – to the famous “If you hear any noise, it’s just me and the boys boppin’” shirt to the black-and-yellow hockey goalie-style mask he once wore up to bat.

Legend has it that the MVP and two-time World Series champ, who had the unenviable task of stepping into the shoes of Roberto Clemente in right field after the Pirates franchise icon’s untimely and tragic death, once knocked the cover completely off a baseball. And yet that was far from the most unbelievable Paul Bunyan-esque tale that trailed Parker throughout his big league career.

That distinction belongs to a home run he hit in West Virginia’s Watt Powell Park, and more specifically where it landed, if it ever touched the ground at all.

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It was 1973 and Parker was a hot prospect playing for the Triple-A Charleston Charlies, who were situated squarely in coal mining country. As the story goes, the powerful left-handed slugger sent a home run so far out of Watt Powell that it landed on top of a coal train that was passing by on the tracks located on the other side of the right-field fence.

That train was purportedly bound for Parker’s hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, so this was as literal a home run as there ever was, if it in fact made it all the way there. Of course nobody knows for sure where that baseball ended up. What we do know is that a few months later, Parker got the call up to the Pirates, finishing his half-season with the Charlies of West Virginia with a .317 batting average that led the International League. On July 12, 1973, at just 22 years old, Parker made his debut in right field for Pittsburgh.

“Everybody was talking about me being the next Roberto Clemente. That wasn’t what I was trying to achieve,” Parker said years later. “I was trying to make my mark as the first Dave Parker.”

And that’s exactly what he did, always unapologetically himself, a one-of-one personality. So the legend of Dave Parker chugs along, like a coal train passing by beyond the walls of a West Virginia ballpark.