Michael Jordan’s 30th Baseball Anniversary: Looking Back at NBA Legend’s Not-So-Legendary Sporting Decision

The Chicago White Sox are celebrating a one-of-a-kind anniversary in the history of their franchise this year. It’s been 30 years since the team had one 3x NBA champion and bona fide basketball great swinging for the fences. The Minor League baseball team commemorated the period they had Michael Jordan on their roster with highlights of his time as a baseball player between three-peats.

We’ve seen it on The Last Dance; Jordan changed his entire regimen and back to fit the role of a baseball player. Yet his hard work for that 1994 baseball season is not remembered as fondly as this White Sox tribute makes it out to be. As the story goes, Jordan led the Chicago Bulls to three titles before losing his father, James R. Jordan, in 1993. Mike announced his first retirement that year and decided to pursue his late father’s unfulfilled dream of seeing MJ play baseball.

Bulls owner, Jerry Reinsdorf owned the White Sox as well. He honored the rest of MJ’s contract while he switched to baseball. Jordan started his career with the Double-A minor league affiliate of the White Sox, the Birmingham Barons. Reinsdorf said this decision was because a single-A team couldn’t handle the media frenzy His Airness would attract. Note, baseball was also an escape to the notoriously private NBA star who was exhausted from the attention since his championships and the 1992 Dream Team.

By most standards, MJ was average as a then 31-year-old rookie with a .202 batting average. He had 3 homeruns, 51 runs batted in, 30 stolen bases, 114 strikeouts, 51 bases on balls and 11 errors. He also had a brief stint with the Scottsdale Scorpions in the 1994 Arizona Fall League. Meanwhile, the Bulls were missing him sorely.

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Baseball was a game-changer for MJ

His original team retired the No.23 in 1994 and erected MJ’s sculpture outside the United Center. The team though was grappling with an NBA which now had a super-sized Shaquille O’Neal in Orlando Magic. He led that fledgling team past the Jordan-less Bulls to the finals and lost to Hakeem Olajuwon-led Houston Rockets.

While the Bulls with the likes of Scottie Pippen weren’t moving past the playoffs, the Rockets won back-to-back championships. As he showed in The Last Dance, Jordan was disappointed in his team. Moreover, the MLB strike in 1995 made him fear that he’d be called up to the Majors.

That combination of factors cemented his decision to quit baseball and release an all-encompassing press statement, “I’m back.” 

Yes, he admitted he was terrified of facing the 7’1″  backboard-breaking Shaq right out of retirement. O’Neal’s proudest achievement is being the last one to beat a Jordan-led team in the 1995 ECF. That defeat gave the Black Cat more reason to remain focused on winning. Jordan though was back in form the next season and went on to win his second three-peat. In a way, his baseball career wasn’t the best, but that time away brought back his love for basketball.

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