Michael Jordan Quit Baseball 21 Years Ago Today

Michael Jordan made his baseball game debut with the Chicago White Sox on March 4, 1994. One year and seven days later, essentially faced with either crossing the 1994-95 MLB strike picket line to become a replacement player or leaving, he left the sport for good.

Today is March 10, exactly 21 years to the day that Jordan said goodbye to his minor league brush with America’s national pastime. Within days he was dropping in on Chicago Bulls practices at the team’s Berto Center facility. On March 18, 1995 he lit up the airwaves with two tiny words – “I’m back” – before joining the Bulls starting lineup the next day in Indianapolis.

You know the rest of the story: another three-peat NBA championship run, two NBA MVPs, three NBA Finals MVPs, two All-Star Game MVPs, three All-NBA First Team selections, three NBA All-Defensive First Team selections, three NBA scoring titles, and a gilded legacy as arguably the greatest athlete ever.

While we’ll never know what Jordan missed by abandoning his baseball aspirations – his old Barons manager Terry Francona says he could’ve made the big leagues – we do know what we would’ve missed if he hadn’t.

Key stats from Jordan’s Double-A Birmingham Barons stint:

127 games
497 at-bats
114 strikeouts
88 hits
17 doubles
1 triple
3 home runs
51 RBIs
30 steals
.202 batting average

photo: MLB