Most of us who love sports had aspirations of playing them at the highest level. The sad reality is the odds aren’t in our favor. For all the time, effort, and expense that can go into training to reach your peak performance level, the probability is you won’t even come close to reaching your dream.
A lot of people will make excuses why they didn’t reach that dream. They’ll say they weren’t tall enough or didn’t live in the right town to gain exposure from scouts, or a myriad of other reasons. The simple fact is this: you weren’t good enough, and that’s alright. There’s really no shame in admitting it.
If Jose Altuve can win an MVP at 5-foot-6′ or Billy Wagner can be a borderline Hall of Famer at 5-foot-10′, the argument about your physical proportions goes out the window. Countless pro athletes across all sports come from small podunk towns all over the world and reach the highest level. So, your belief that where you were born worked against you is null and void.
The simple truth is, to be a professional athlete you have to be a different species than the rest of us. Even the worst player in each respective sport is better than 99.99% of people who ever attempted it. So, to be gifted enough to play two sports at the highest level sets you apart from even those gifted enough to get paid to play just one game they love.
There have been numerous examples of multi-sport pro athletes of varying success. You had Danny Ainge, who made it to MLB with the Toronto Blue Jays before settling on his career as a bench player in the NBA. Brian Jordan played in both the NFL and MLB, having an extended career in the latter sport. Perhaps the most prominent example is Deion Sanders, who played in the NFL and MLB concurrently for some time.
Prime is known for being a Hall of Fame cornerback, but he had over 2,000 plate appearances in the bigs and played in the World Series with the Atlanta Braves in 1992. Here’s Prime talking about the hardest thing he had to do in sports.
This year marks 30 years since Michael Jordan’s suspension — I mean retirement — from the NBA for the first time. Jordan, at the peak of his powers on the court, decided to trade in primetime NBA spectacles for riding a bus in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Surely, he was just burnt out from leading the first non-Boston Celtics three-peat in NBA history the prior year as “The Last Dance” portrayed.
The anniversary has people looking back on this crazy period of time while examining Jordan’s baseball abilities and revisiting the perception that swirled around his decision at the time.
Taking His Lumps
I will confess that I wasn’t a Chicago Bulls fan during the Jordan dynasty. I think my heelish tendencies started to take root early on in my youth as I was the kid with the Dennis Rodman Spurs jersey, much to the dismay of my friends and their parents during that era. Who knew at the time that Rodzilla would be a few short years away from joining the greatest heel wrestling faction, the n.W.o.
At 10 years old, I scoffed at Jordan’s performance with the Chicago White Sox Double-A affiliate, the Birmingham Barons. For the season, MJ slashed .202/.290/.266 with three home runs and 30 stolen bases. For a full-time baseball player, that’s the type of slash line that causes your dream to come to an abrupt end. It didn’t for His Airness, however.
Following the 1994 season, Jordan was invited to play in the Arizona Fall League, which is the premier showcase for top minor-league talent during October and November. Jordan’s Double-A manager, soon-to-be Hall of Famer Terry Francona, was adamant during “The Last Dance” that had Jordan continued playing baseball, he would’ve reached MLB, at least as a fourth outfielder. Francona is a pretty good judge of talent and an accomplished manager, so I think I’ll take his word for that.
On the surface, Jordan doesn’t appear deserving of praise for his performance on the diamond. But when you consider that Jordan picked up his bat at 31 years old after not using it competitively since he was a teenager, it really is a remarkable task that he was able to perform the way he did. Most of us who played the game, as I mentioned, aren’t good enough to get paid to play for a single day. To perform at the level MJ did after a decade away from the game shows what an alien he truly was as an athlete.
For all the talk about the greatest athletes of all time, Jordan’s foray into professional baseball isn’t something that is often mentioned in those discussions. I think over time we should have a better understanding of how truly remarkable it was that he had the level of success he did while playing with the Barons. Obviously, he was given the opportunity he was because of who he was, but that doesn’t negate the fact that he put in the work and performed at a level most of us couldn’t on our best day.
Having failed as a baseball player myself, I’ve gained an appreciation for MJ’s performance in the sport that I love. No matter how much football or basketball fans try to downplay baseball because it’s not physical the way those sports are, it’s unbelievably difficult. If a Hall of Fame football player and the greatest basketball player to ever live struggled to do it, that should tell you all you need to know.
Michael Jordan didn’t embarrass himself with the Birmingham Barons. On the contrary, he showed that he wasn’t built like the rest of us. There is a strong belief that he would’ve reached baseball’s highest level if his punishment — or retirement — didn’t come to an end in the spring of 1995. Had that happened, it would’ve been one of the most unique and impressive accomplishments in pro sports.