That may not jump off his Baseball Reference page, which shows that he hit. He rode the bus for one season (1994) with the Birmingham Barons, a Double-A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox and performed remarkably well considering the level of competition he was stepping into and his decades of rust.
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"If not for his relationship with the White Sox, (the A’s offer) might have been something he might have done." Click here to download the new MyTeams App by NBC Sports! Receive comprehensive coverage of your teams and stream the White Sox easily on your device.Michael Jordan shocked the world when he announced he was retiring from basketball to pursue his first love. "Michael’s an amazingly loyal guy," Falk told Castrovince. He went to spring training with the White Sox and spent a season with the Barons.īut if Jordan hadn't been a Bull, if Reinsdorf didn't own both an NBA team and a Major League Baseball team in the same city, if the conditions hadn't been exactly right, Jordan might have gone to the big leagues in Oakland. He didn’t want to be a Herb Washington type who would just steal bases and be a part-time outfielder."Īnd so Jordan opted for the comfort of a Reinsdorf-owned organization. "He didn’t feel he deserved a spot on the major league roster and didn’t feel he was ready. "But he wanted to do the baseball thing from the ground up.
"I was excited about (the offer), and Michael was very appreciative," David Falk, Jordan's agent, told MLB.com's Anthony Castrovince.
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Turns out Jordan, while thankful to receive the opportunity to play in the big leagues, wasn't keen on making the jump from no pro baseball experience to the sport's highest level.
RELATED: Jerry Krause's White Sox tenure meant "he had a hand in seven championships" Those are hypotheticals that Bulls fans fortunately don't have to worry about. Had Jordan achieved his dream of playing Major League Baseball right away, would he have been so quick to abandon the sport and make his return to basketball in 1995?Īnd had he been playing for another owner besides Jerry Reinsdorf, would it have been such an easy move to go right back to the Bulls? Or might his return come with another team? Team USA shifts focus to Olympics after World Cup defeat as LeBron James, Steph Curry show interest But it could have certainly altered the course of Chicago sports history. That might not have done much for Oakland's fortunes in 1994, as Jordan proved to be far less of a baseball player than he was a basketball player. The idea was, 'We’ve got Michael Jordan on our team' and the interest that would have generated."
"It wasn’t about, 'We’ve got a spot for him, he’s got a particular skill,'" Alderson told Olney. Jordan had the chance to be part of a major league roster that also included Rickey Henderson and Mark McGwire. I don't even know who the 25th man is on our major league team right now, I will sign him and put him on the major league roster. "When I heard that was happening, or about to happen, I called his agent right away and said, 'Hey look, I understand he may be going to Double-A. "You recall when Jordan stopped playing basketball and decided to try baseball, and ultimately went down to the Birmingham Barons - the Chicago White Sox affiliate," Alderson said. And with a different organization altogether.įormer Oakland Athletics general manager Sandy Alderson told ESPN's Buster Olney on a recent edition of the Baseball Tonight podcast that he offered Jordan a spot on his major league roster in 1994. Michael Jordan's departure from his life as the greatest basketball player in the world to play minor league baseball with the White Sox is the stuff of Chicago legend.īut it might have gone quite differently.
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