The truth about Michael Jordan’s MLB prospects: ‘I swear, he was going to the majors’

Take a look back at Michael Jordan’s baseball season with the Birmingham Barons, the Chicago White Sox’s minor league affiliate, in 1994. (1:29)

He has made it very exciting tonight. With the Barons leading 5-1, Jordan steps in for the fourth time … two of his three at-bats were near homers … he skied deep to left center when he hit the ball to the wall in the fourth, and then in the sixth, Jordan pulled the ball a little bit more and missed by 2 feet … Fly ball deep to left again, Ratliff going back, back to the warning track, looking up … IT IS GON-ZO JORDAN! He’s done it!
— Curt Bloom, Birmingham Barons play-by-play announcer, July 30, 1994

The Barons don’t play at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium anymore. But until they moved to Regions Field in downtown Birmingham in 2013, the facilities at the old ballpark south of the city paid homage to some of the greats who had passed through. There was the Rollie Fingers Bullpen Deck, named for the Hall of Fame reliever who had pitched for the A’s farm club there in 1967 and ’68, and the Robin Ventura Pavilion, honoring the third baseman who had been a Baron in 1989 before getting called up to the Chicago White Sox, and the Frank Thomas Picnic Area, dedicated to the Hall of Fame slugger who put a Double-A Hurt on Southern League pitchers in 1990. The dining facility? Well, that bore the name of a certain, .202-hitting right fielder for the 1994 Barons.

There was a certain delicious irony to calling it The Michael Jordan Banquet Hall. After all, he started quite a feeding frenzy 25 years ago on the night of April 8 at the Hoover Met when he made his official professional baseball debut. Wearing No. 45, his old Laney (North Carolina) High number, the 31-year-old émigré from basketball drew a crowd of 10,359, as well as 130 members of the media. They watched him fly out in his first at-bat against Chattanooga starter John Courtright. For the night, and for the record, he went 0-for-3 in a 10-3 loss to the Lookouts. The crowd went home mildly disappointed.
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