Beat writer reflects on Michael Jordan’s brief dance with baseball

Apparently a lot of sports fans around the country discovered Sunday night that Michael Jordan’s manager during his 13-month minor-league baseball career was Terry Francona.  Birmingham sports fans – at least those of a certain age – have known that forever.

PHOTO FROM NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM

Francona, the manager who ended the infamous World Series drought of the Boston Red Sox, began trending on social media after the most recent installment of ESPN’s 10-part documentary “The Last Dance,” which chronicles the 1990s dynasty of the Chicago Bulls and its superstar. Sunday’s segment included an interview with Francona as it explored Jordan’s stunning decision to leave the NBA and try his hand at playing baseball for the Double-A Birmingham Barons in 1994.

I remember it well. I had been the sports editor of The Birmingham News for maybe one month (translation: clueless) when our Barons beat writer, Wayne Martin, informed me that the world’s most famous person was coming to Birmingham. Oh gosh. What do I do with this?

Some national media at the time dubbed Jordan’s decision as a public relations stunt that was embarrassing the sport. In fact, the 31-year-old Jordan had every intention of legitimately earning his way to the major leagues.

“The Last Dance” has prompted a number of interesting reflections on Jordan’s flight of adventure. I wanted some from one of the reporters who was there for every home game, Martin.

Martin, who covered the Barons for 20 years, agrees with Francona that were it not for the 1994 players’ strike that cut the season short in August and delayed the start of the next season, Jordan would have made it to the majors with the Chicago White Sox. Considering he hadn’t played baseball since high school and was learning the game at the Double-A level, some of his stats were remarkable, Martin said. That included 51 runs batted in and 30 stolen bases. Even a .202 average in Year One was impressive, in Martin’s view. Jordan began the season with a 13-game hitting streak. “Then they started throwing him curveballs,” Martin said. But Jordan was undaunted, constantly taking extra batting practice.

Wayne Martin, RETIRED FROM THE Birmingham News

The White Sox assigned Jordan to Double-A, rather than the easier Single-A, partly because the Hoover Met provided less public access and greater security than other minor-league stadiums in the Sox organization, Martin said.

Still, Jordan didn’t act as if he were special. Same locker setup, same hotels, same bus (albeit a new, luxury bus). Knowing he put his teammates through the “hardship” of unprecedented media attention – “(Reporters) were almost going with him into the shower,” Martin said – he occasionally bought meals on the road for them. He spent considerable time in the manager’s office playing Yahtzee with Francona, and true to the player’s well-known competitive streak, they kept score all season.

Martin met Jordan for the first time in an empty locker room in Sarasota, Florida, during spring training. One of the world’s greatest athletes was eating a McDonald’s Big Mac. “McDonald’s pays me a lot of money,” he told Martin. “People who pay me, I use their products.”

Despite tense relations with the Chicago media, including questions about Jordan’s gambling-related activities, that wasn’t the case with Martin and the other local beat reporter, Rubin Grant of The Birmingham Post-Herald. “He said, ‘You are the local media. You have access to me when nobody else does,’” Martin recalled. “And he stuck by it all year.”

He’d sometimes get annoyed, though. Martin’s editor (that would be me) required at least a short Jordan-focused story after every home game. So Martin routinely approached him. “He would say ‘Don’t come to me. I didn’t do anything tonight. Go talk to (a teammate).’”

Martin recalled Jordan getting angry only once. The News published a story by sports writer Doug Segrest on how Jordan spent his free time in Birmingham, including occasional visits to a pool hall and Sammy’s Gentlemen’s Club. Grant wrote a commentary that Jordan should spend less time in places like those and more time interacting with people in Birmingham’s inner neighborhoods. Jordan didn’t like that criticism and summoned for Grant before that night’s game. “He chewed him out a little bit,” Martin said.

Jordan could be kindhearted too. During a pre-game “Field of Dreams” promotion, Jordan stood next to a young special-needs player in a wheelchair in right field during the National Anthem.  The boy’s mother later asked the Barons organization if she could send an enlarged print for Jordan to sign, but was told no because all such requests had to go to Jordan’s agent. So, at the team’s suggestion, she came to a later game and stood along the right-field wall, holding up the enlarged photo while Jordan shagged pre-game flyballs. He returned to the dugout, with the mother thinking he hadn’t noticed her. But soon, at Jordan’s request, a clubhouse attendant found her in the stands and took the photo for Jordan to autograph.   

“It’s things like that that made me pull for him,” Martin said. “If he wanted to be a major leaguer, I pulled for him to do it.”