“This Is Really the Rarest of All”: Michael Jordan Once Got Roasted on National TV but Didn’t “Take It Personally”

Michael Jordan is known for his dominance on the NBA court. In 2020, the world went crazy when he revealed his “I took that personally” moment in ‘The Last Dance’. Jordan was aggressively competitive throughout his career and let petty slights encourage him to go play well. It made him one of the best players the NBA has ever seen. But there was a rare time that he did not let things affect him much.

Jordan was a guest on ‘The Tonight Show’ hosted by comedian Jay Leno. He came there to promote his line of fragrances. Leno was seeing one of the bottles and called it “rare air” in front of the legend. It was a tropical scented scent that captured the environment of the beaches of Costa Rica.

Jordan asked Leno whether he had been to Costa Rica. Leno declared that he did not, but only got a chance through the perfume. Jordan, then, asked him to try the home run scent and joked in a self-deprecating manner that he did not hit many during his baseball career.

Leno joked and called this scent, “the rarest of all”. He said, “this is the one you paid big bucks for. That’s why the bottle’s so small.” Jordan did not mind much, as he knew he was there to be made fun of.

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Jordan was clearly enjoying the jokes about his baseball career. It was a short-lived and unsuccessful foray for him before he returned to basketball. The surrounding circumstances were strange, but to summarise it: he retired from playing the game at the age of 30 in 1993 after his third successive NBA title, only to return in 1995 and complete his next 3-peat in NBA.

Michael Jordan had no qualms about people making fun of his baseball career

It led to Jordan fulfilling his old man’s last wish: that was to see his son play baseball. He was already tired from the 1992 Olympic Dream team run and his celebrity status. This provided a clean break for him. He signed a Minor League contract with the Chicago White Sox. In 1994, he played for the Birmingham Barons, a Double-A minor league affiliate of the White Sox.

He had a batting average of 0.202 with three home runs and 51 runs batted in. He also appeared for the Scottsdale Scorpions in the Arizona Fall League batting 0.252 against top prospects.

The Bulls were struggling at the same time and were 55-27 in the regular season of 1993-94 and were knocked out by the New York Knicks in the first round. In 1994-95, the Bulls were 31-31 during March. Jordan decided to return as he feared that he would become a replacement player during the Major League strike.

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It wasn’t a very successful venture for Jordan but it did lead him back to the Bulls where he won another three-peat from 1996 to 1998.