Mourning his father’s death, Michael Jordan decided to step away from the NBA limelight to follow another passion: baseball. The Chicago Bulls had secured their first three-peat, and the announcement caught everyone by surprise. While MJ stepped away from the hardwood, the bond with the team continued.
Winning his third championship came crashing down when his father, James Jordan, was m——d. Plus, media scrutiny swirling around his gambling added pressure. Even then and now, MJ has denied stepping away from the NBA due to gambling allegations. It was only to pursue a path that his father had previously envisaged for younger Jordan. Former teammate Horace Grant also confirmed that the personal loss had a lot of bearing on His Airness.
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“Man, people don’t know in terms of he lost his dad. The trauma that a guy like that has no privacy, losing his dad, and the wear and tear on you mentally can take a toll on you. And he just wanted to get away, man, I think, and pursue baseball,” said Grant on All The Smoke podcast. “We never heard gambling and all of that sh–.”
“He used to come in and practice with us. Still come to practice and then of course baseball.” While for everyone, MJ had stepped away from basketball completely, he would still show up at the facility as per Grant, which even caught host Matt Barnes by surprise. The relationship between the players did not deteriorate despite Michael Jordan’s pursuit of baseball because of the strong ties to the ownership group.
Matt Barnes asks Horace Grant about Michael Jordan leaving the Chicago Bulls to play baseball, and the conspiracy theories surrounding his departure. Grant reveals how the team was motivated to prove they could win without Jordan and shares that MJ still showed up to practices pic.twitter.com/MEU1cMD3mw
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Jerry Reinsdorf, who owned the Chicago Bulls, also owned the Chicago White Sox. It was with White Sox’s Double-A ball affiliate team that MJ signed his contract. In fact, the relationship was so strong that Reinsdorf even paid the entire NBA salary to His Airness. During his time away from the NBA spotlight, MJ was very appreciative of his time with the Birmingham Barons.
Jordan also didn’t complain about the bus travel instead of plane rides in the NBA. Their accommodations shifted to the various La Quinta Inns where the Barons bunked, but again no issues for MJ. While his performances weren’t elite, Barons drew over 467,000 fans at home.
Michael Jordan was at peace with his decision
At 30 years old, with zero pro baseball experience, the Chicago Bulls legend entered uncharted territory. As he was still learning, the performance wasn’t what the NBA icon had produced on the hardwood. Instead of the frustration seeping in, veteran reporter Mike Greenberg noticed something he hadn’t seen before.
“He was sitting on this bench in this tiny little clubhouse, smaller than the locker room at my high school, and covered in cheap beer with a cigar and the baseball bat,” Greenberg recalled on the Awful Announcing podcast. “And he had a smile on his face like a look of satisfaction that was the equal of what I had seen.”
Greenberg stated that he had seen Michael Jordan win multiple championships, MVPs, and even the Olympic gold medal. But the smile, mood, and feeling of content only came from baseball. Ultimately, basketball came calling again. After the strike-shortened 1994–95 season, Jordan decided to leave baseball and make his return to the Bulls for the second time.
