Michael Jordan – a member of the Oakland A’s? It almost happened in that one year that Jordan retired from the NBA to play baseball.
There may not have been a stranger cameo in professional baseball than the one that Michael Jordan had. Seemingly atop the NBA universe, and with the Bulls coming off a three-peat, Jordan shocked everyone when he abruptly retired. Even more surprising, Jordan headed to the diamond, spending the 1994 season with the Chicago White Sox AA team, the Birmingham Barons.
However, the White Sox were not the only team interested in bringing Jordan on board. While it was essentially a given that he would end up remaining in Chicago, Jordan’s agent, David Falk, reached out to other teams to attempt to get the best offer possible. As it turned out, that offer belonged to the Oakland A’s.
At the time, the A’s were not the team they had been at the beginning of the decade. Mark McGwire was still a part of the franchise, but he was dealing with injuries. Rickey Henderson was still a threat on the basepaths, but he was not going to win games by himself. The A’s once vaunted pitching staff was in shambles, to the point where journeyman Steve Ontiveros was their best starter.
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The A’s were also quite realistic about their chances for the 1994 season, knowing that it was likely to be a lost year. When Jordan’s agent reached out, then general manager Sandy Alderson had quite the proposal – a guaranteed spot on the A’s major league roster.
Naturally, Falk was excited. Jordan would get his chance at the major league level, and while there may be a lot of rust, he would have been a major drawing card. Surprisingly, Jordan was not nearly as interested as Falk was. He wanted to earn his spot in the majors, which, given his intensely competitive spirit, may not have been much of a surprise in retrospect.
The 1994 season was not what either side would have hoped for. The A’s managed to finish second in a brutally awful AL West, and were a game out of first, but posted a 51-63 record. Jordan struggled at AA, posting a .202/.289/.266 batting line, hitting 17 doubles and stealing 30 bases. While he displayed a solid batting eye, drawing 51 walks and striking out just 114 times in 497 plate appearances, he was unable to consistently make hard contact. Jordan may have easily been the best athlete in the game, but he showed it takes far more than athleticism to hit a baseball.
Michael Jordan’s baseball career may have only lasted one season, but it was one of the stranger moments in sports in the 1990s. But at least he was still part of a Chicago organization – just imagine how strange it would have been to see Jordan in an Oakland A’s uniform.