was michael jordan good at baseball

[CosmicDaLoc 0]

As this spring training marks the 20th anniversary of the end of Michael Jordan’s foray into baseball, and the misinformed ridicule that came with it, I was hoping time would’ve judged Jordan’s effort a little more kindly than the Sports Illustrated cover in March of 1994 showing Jordan missing a pitch, with the huge headline of “Bag It, Michael.” And this was merely an anecdotal photo of him whiffing on a pitch in an exhibition game, long before the completion of what I consider to be one of the greatest sporting accomplishments of the 20th century.

No, 20 years later Jordan’s spring with the White Sox and summer with the Birmingham Barons is mostly remembered little more than as a failed publicity stunt, an indulgence of someone so famous he couldn’t accrue more global fame, and a punchline. This despite the vouching from his Double-A manager, Terry Francona, on just how seriously Jordan took the game and the confirmed attendance of Jordan at 6:30 a.m. batting sessions.

To make a Jordan baseball joke now would be akin to playing Pogs rather than Angry Birds on your phone, but in the 90s jokes about “45” were unrelenting. (#23 was taken by current White Sox manager Robin Ventura.) Of course that tide was stemmed by Jordan’s return to the NBA and three more championships. It was that, and decidedly NOT the remarkable challenge of trying to go from one major sport to another at age 31 which cemented Jordan’s legacy as the unchallenged greatest sporting hero of my generation. But to not appreciate Jordan’s “success” in baseball is to not understand baseball.

 

The folks wont to laugh at Jordan’s baseball career will of course point to his .202 average (127 games) in a MINOR league. This is patently absurd. The fact Jordan hit over .200 in the third-highest level of professional baseball, at 31, 13 years removed from his last baseball experience as a senior in high school, is all the proof Jordan needs to make his case as the greatest athlete who ever lived when combined with his on-court exploits.