When Jordan took a swing at baseball

Watching Michael Jordan’s strange journey into baseball in 1994 on “The Last Dance” brought back memories.

The Chronicle sent me to Birmingham, Ala., to write about Jordan chasing his crazy dream. One of the oddest assignments I’ve ever had.

The sports world was struggling to process Jordan fleeing basketball superstardom for baseball supersuckdom. There was a lot of scorn and ridicule, most notably Sports Illustrated’s scolding cover: “Bag it, Michael.” It was as if Jordan retired from basketball to become a bank robber.

In Birmingham and in the Southern League, though, folks got it. They bought in, heart and soul. Roughly half

the total league attendance that season was for Barons games. Here’s the top of the story I wrote:

When Michael Jordan and his Birmingham Barons made a road trip to Orlando, the media demanded and got a press conference — with Dale Richardson, the driver of the Barons’ bus, which Jordan bought for his new team.

Jordan is the biggest minorleague baseball story in years. The secondbiggest story is Jordan’s bus. Third? Maybe Jordan’s baseball shoes.

I am stationed at Jordan’s locker in the Barons’ clubhouse, waiting for the rookie right fielder to finish batting practice. ... Waiting with me is a video crew from a Tokyo TV network.

The cameraman is on his knees at Jordan’s altar — I mean, locker — shooting a closeup of one of Michael’s baseball cleats.

The cameraman says something in Japanese, but the shoe declines to comment.

Jordan was a source of awe in Birmingham, but behind the scenes, he was just one of the fellas, a scufflin’ minorleaguer, enjoying the adventure.

Looking back, that season must have been a massive emotional relief for Jordan. The main theme in “The Last Dance” is how Jordan drove his teammates relentlessly, a bully and tyrant. In Birmingham, Jordan didn’t have to lead or bully. He couldn’t have done that even if he wanted to. A guy hitting .200 can’t be a tyranni

cal leader, he can only hope to fit in, and Jordan did.

He played Nerf basketball in the clubhouse with a batboy. Jordan and pitcher Atlee Hammaker had leaping contests, touching ceiling pipes.

Jordan was hitting just over .200 at the time, but taking his struggles in stride.

If you are embarrassed for Jordan, don’t be. He is having fun. He comes to the ballyard early, works hard, stays late, pals around with the other Barons. One recent night he steals second, pops up and gives himself a sweeping “safe” sign.

Jordan seems to show up with a new batting stance every night, and at a storklike 66, drawing on a Little Leaguer’s baseball experience, he can look painfully awkward striking out. But he has won three games with late hits,

and is fourth on the team in RBIs.

Jordan told me, “I’m mature, and 31, and I can accept failure.”

I noticed that Jordan had come to the right place to make baseball history. Birmingham was steeped in baseball tradition, not all of it pleasant. For decades it was a twoteam town, the Barons and the Black Barons. The two teams had shared a ballpark but never played each another.

The Black Barons, a top level team in the Negro Leagues, once featured a local 17yearold high school kid named Willie Mays. I located Mays’ Black Barons manager, Piper Davis. He told me about the time, a week or two into Mays’ career, when he switched the high school junior from left to center, and heard grumbling from the players.

“I said, ‘There’s the lineup, gentlemen. Anybody doesn’t like it, there’s the clubhouse, go in and take off your uniform.’ Pretty soon, the ball would go into leftcenter, I’d hear the left fielder, ‘Come on, Willie!’ Ball go into rightcenter, I’d hear the right fielder, ‘Come on, Willie!’

“I called ’em in, said, ‘You’d better start earnin’ your salary. I can get anybody to stand out there and yell, ‘Come on, Willie!’ ”

Jordan didn’t seem to pay much attention to the local baseball history, even as he was bringing a measure of togetherness to a racially divided city. A Barons fan told me, “It was rare last year to see black families at the ballpark. In fact, last year I never saw any.”

At the games I attended, 10% to 15% of the fans were black.

There was a lot of public speculation and amateur psychoanalysis about Jordan’s motives for making the bizarre career change. Watching from upclose, though, it seemed at least possible that he simply wanted to play baseball.

That’s how the fans saw it. They loved the guy. He got a standing O every time he entered the ondeck circle. A Barons PR man told me that the only bigger draw than Jordan was a onegame appearance by the Famous Chicken mascot.

But let’s see the Chicken draw big if he tries to switch species.