Paul Sullivan: Michael Jordan’s baseball fantasy – and his failure – is a big part of his legend in Chicago

CHICAGO – The sheer audacity of Michael Jordan still resonates 26 years later.

What was the world’s greatest basketball player trying to prove in the winter of 1994, when he made the shocking decision to become a professional baseball player?

Imagine any pro athlete, no matter how talented, thinking he could just switch sports at age 30 and compete with the best players in the world in a game he hadn’t played since high school.

Jordan’s memorable journey as a minor league outfielder in the White Sox system will be explored Sunday in the latest edition of the ESPN documentary “The Last Dance,” providing viewers a glimpse of a wild, 14-month trek that began with a request from his late father and ended with his return to the Bulls, with whom he won three more NBA titles.

Like most of the previous episodes of “The Last Dance,” many know the story of Jordan’s baseball quest, having lived through it in the 1990s.

But seeing again how it all played out reminds us anew of the city’s never-ending obsession with all things Michael.

Rumors began flying in early 1994, three months after Jordan’s sudden retirement from the Bulls following the murder of his father, James Jordan. Radio reporter Cheryl Raye first reported Jordan was taking batting practice at new Comiskey Park in an attempt to try out for the White Sox, though few believed it was realistic.

On Jan. 6, Bob Verdi, the Chicago Tribune’s Wake of the News columnist, wrote: “Michael Jordan is serious about playing baseball. Feel free to assume that the disclaimers being issued from Comiskey Park are camouflage.”

But the next day, Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf told Tribune baseball columnist Jerome Holtzman he didn’t think it would happen, suggesting Jordan was “fooling around” in the batting cage while rehabbing his right wrist under the care of Sox trainer Herm Schneider.

“I know this: Michael will never make a fool of himself,” Reinsdorf said. “And he would not ask us if he didn’t think he would be successful. He can’t possibly prove that because he hasn’t hit against live pitching.”

Jordan remained mum about his plan until Jan. 13, when he revealed to Tribune columnist Bob Greene he was going to Sox spring training camp in Sarasota, Florida, to try to make the team.

“This is no fantasy,” Jordan said, adding that his father advised him two years earlier to play baseball.

When Greene brought up the widespread skepticism among baseball experts and fans over his quixotic adventure, Jordan replied: “I love to hear them say that. My whole life, that’s been the kind of thing that has driven me. You tell me that I can’t do something, and I’m going to do it.”

Reinsdorf told Jordan the transition would be more difficult than he imagined but gave him the opportunity with a split major league/minor league contract and no guarantee he would make it to the majors. Chicago was suddenly in an uproar, with half the town rooting for Jordan to succeed and the other half assured the legend would fail.

Among the many doubters was Holtzman, who also was one of the few pundits who had criticized Jordan as a basketball player, often referring to him as a “ball hog” who was not a team player. After Jordan’s plan became public, Holtzman called WGN-9 and asked Bozo the Clown if he would be interested in playing for the Cubs.

Former Sox announcer Jimmy Piersall, then a minor league outfield coach with the Cubs, said Jordan’s belief that he could become a major league hitter without the necessary years of practice “makes me want to puke.”

But not everyone was a skeptic. Cubs great Ernie Banks said: “Can he do it? Yes, he can. This will be a nice lift for baseball. We’ve gotten a little stale.”

Tribune columnist Mike Royko criticized sports writers for not allowing Jordan to chase his dream. “What would the sports pundits say if he had decided to become an international playboy, chasing willowy young things on the French Riviera and drinking bubbly until dawn?” Royko wrote. “They’d be less indignant, since that would be something with which they could identify, the pudgy creeps.”

Jordan finally was trotted out for the media Feb. 7 at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s gym, where an unimpressive batting-practice session before a couple of hundred media members started things on the wrong foot. Sox general manager Ron Schueler called him a “million-to-one shot,” but Jordan told the media: “I’m not afraid to fail.”

Spring training turned into a predictable circus, and Sports Illustrated famously advised Jordan on its March 14 cover to “Bag It, Michael,” saying he and the Sox were “embarrassing baseball.”

Jordan never spoke to the magazine again.

A season with Double-A Birmingham didn’t convince anyone Jordan was close to making it to the majors. He hit .202 with three home runs, 30 stolen bases and 114 strikeouts in 127 games but helped fill ballparks with curious fans and improved as the season went on.

The Sox sent him to the Arizona Fall League in September for seasoning with the Scottsdale Scorpions, and he played on a team with some of the game’s top prospects, including future Red Sox star Nomar Garciaparra.

Jordan hadn’t completely stopped playing hoops, however. Former Cubs outfielder Doug Glanville, who played for the Mesa team in the AFL, recently recalled playing a pickup game that fall against a team led by Jordan. “The whole game he was trash talking,” Glanville said.

Jordan’s manager in Birmingham and Scottsdale was Terry Francona, a likely Hall of Famer with two World Series rings in Boston. During a trip to Tucson to watch Jordan play, Francona told me Jordan was “good for baseball” while still learning his craft.

“He may not make it to the majors,” Francona said. “He knows that. But he’s not going to stop trying.”

Jordan seemed a bit humbled after his first year of pro ball but remained undeterred. He held his own against the top prospects and was hoping to start the next year with Triple-A Nashville.

“I’m not embarrassed that I’m the last man on this team,” he said. “It gives me something to work for. Part of the challenge for me personally is to prove wrong the naysayers.”

The next time I saw Jordan was four months later at Sox camp in Sarasota. Major leaguers still were locked out after the strike ended the 1994 season, so Jordan was the focal point in a clubhouse filled with replacement players and minor leaguers.

The Sox did Jordan no favors, putting his locker next to a catcher with hygiene issues, but they assured him he wouldn’t have to be a strike-breaker and play in spring training games with replacement players, whom the media referred to as the “Scab Sox.”

“I like to think that I’m not doing anything that’s wrong,” Jordan told the Sox beat writers. “If I’m doing something wrong, then I’ve got to reevaluate it. The last thing I want to do is get myself in the middle of this whole mess.”

The media circus had died down by February ’95, and with only a handful of beat writers in the clubhouse, Jordan seemed much more at ease. During a March 1 interview, he told me his “inner confidence” was rising with a season under his belt and he felt that was the “missing link.”

“I think I’ve swayed some people a little bit just by being here and lasting this long,” Jordan said. “But I’ve still got a long ways to go.”

After the interview Jordan got up from his chair by palming my head like a basketball and using it for leverage to stand, poking fun at my stature. “Thanks, Paul,” he said with a laugh. Unlike Jerry Krause, the frequent target of Jordan’s “short” jokes, I didn’t take offense.

The next day, after he and 30 other minor leaguers refused to play in the exhibition games and were ordered to move to a smaller minor league clubhouse, Jordan left the practice field in a huff and soon bolted training camp in his SUV, saying he was “going home” to Chicago.

Jordan’s private jet dipped over Sox camp the next morning in a salute to his teammates, who waved at the sky from the field. The grand baseball experiment was over, and Chicagoans held their breath, anxiously awaiting his next move.

It came a couple of weeks later: On March 18, Jordan sent a fax with the two most beautiful words in Bulls history:

“I’m back.”