THE BASKETBALL PLAYER

November 19, 2023

Good evening. This is Dead Legends. The daily newsletter that believes Sweet Lou should be in the Hall of Fame.

Let’s dive in.

Today’s story is about one of the great ones and his short-lived baseball career.

He’s a man that’s known by many names.

The GOAT, the Black Cat, Superman, etc.

Mr. OG Space Jam himself, Michael Jordan.

In ‘93, MJ was at the top of his game, coming off a three-peat with the Chicago Bulls.

Then out of nowhere, at the peak of his career, he retired and joined the Birmingham Barons, a double A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox.

Abruptly retiring from the NBA to play minor league baseball for $5 an hour and travel by bus all over the midwest…

Seems like a pretty strange decision.

To this day, no one truly knows the whole story except for MJ and maybe a few others, but there’s essentially two different narratives.

The first is what has been made public:

Michael’s father, James Jordan Sr., was tragically shot and murdered in July of ‘93 while asleep in his car.

Of course, this was devastating to Jordan, and he said part of the reason he wanted to play baseball is because it made him feel close to his dad.

The two had always talked about Michael playing baseball, and how much he loved the game.

Plus, the competitor in him wanted to take on a new challenge.

The other story is that this was actually a secret suspension.

Sounds like a conspiracy theory… but there are definitely some facts that point to this being possible.

It all traces back to Jordan’s gambling.

In ‘92, Jordan was called to testify in the criminal trial of James Bouler to explain why Bouler, a convicted drug dealer, was in possession of a personal check from Jordan for $57,000.

Initially, MJ claimed it was a business loan, but under oath he changed his testimony.

He admitted the payment was actually for gambling losses accrued over a single weekend.

In ‘93, Richard Equinas published a book called Michael and Me: Our Gambling Addiction...My Cry for Help.

According to Equinas, he won over $900,000 from Jordan in golf betting.

The NBA launched an investigation into Jordan’s gambling in ‘93 before he retired, but they cleared him of any wrongdoing.

Some people believe they allowed him to “retire” and go play baseball for a year so that they could avoid the PR nightmare of this scandal and keep Jordan’s brand clean.

Either way, we know one thing for sure - baseball fans loved it.

Jordan played one season in ‘94, and although he struggled at times, he worked his ass off, and by the end of the season, he’d gained the respect of his teammates and coaches.

The Barons drew over 467,000 fans to home games that year and was essentially a packed house every night.

It all reached a crescendo when Jordan played a single exhibition game for the White Sox against the Cubs and went 2 for 4 with 2 RBI’s.

The next year, he was back in the NBA and led the Bulls to another three-peat in ‘96, ‘97, and ‘98’.

BARONS #45

In the spirit of today’s email, we’ve got some MJ merch for ya.

The shirt is made by our friends at Homage; they’ve got a ton of cool stuff on their site.

Great place to do some gift shopping for the holidays too.

BASEBALL TRIVIA

Find the answer in the bottom of this email!

STRANGE NAMES

If you're just joining us, we play this game every day where we try to find the weirdest names throughout baseball history.

Why? Don't ask us, it's just something we like to do.

If you've been rocking with us for awhile now, you know what time it is.

Today's winner is:

Names don’t get much worse than this.

Holly played three seasons and put up some painfully mediocre numbers.

After he retired in 1875, he never played in the big leagues again, but he coached a bit.

In 1884, he managed the Washington Nationals of the American Association to a 12-50 finish - that was his last season.

Not much is known about his personal life, and the guy is basically a ghost online.

THE DEAD LEGENDS ARCHIVE

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BASEBALL TRIVIA ANSWER: Johnny Vander Meer