There are two reasons why I've been reopening the wounds of the 1995 season during the pandemic delay:
- In lieu of new things, it's more fun to revisit old things that surprise me, rather than common nostalgia subjects.
- It seems relevant to explore the unintended consequences of a disrupted season and labor tension.
Both points crossed paths during the most recent installments of "The Last Dance," ESPN's 10-part documentary about Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls career. Episodes 7 and 8 covered Jordan's time with the Birmingham Barons, and it'd seem fresher if we didn't just experience the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of Jordan's season with the Barons last summer. (Along the same lines, the White Sox will air a replay of the Blackout Game on Facebook, which is now both 12 years old and still their most recent moment of triumph.)
There are multiple benefits to revisiting Jordan's baseball career at this particular moment. The documentary put Jerry Reinsdorf on the record about that stretch of 1994-95, which is noteworthy because he doesn't go on the record about much these days. He used the opportunity to pretend as if he wasn't one of the driving forces behind the labor stoppage:
"The fact of the matter is, in my opinion, if Michael Jordan had stayed with baseball, he would've gotten to the major leagues. But when the baseball strike started in '94, and Major League Baseball came up with what was a really dumb idea of trying to start the season with replacement players."
If you want to believe, it's a little encouraging to see Reinsdorf refer to the league's actions as "really dumb," because theoretically one wouldn't want to try dumb gambits again. I'm more inclined to think disassociating himself from it makes it easier to not absorb any lessons from the time he chose fighting a labor war over maximizing his team's peak, which makes it all the more likely that he'll do it again. If he'd like to prove that theory wrong, by all means.
There's the potential for labor tension to reignite when the league's proposal to players is made official, and we'll watch that unfold tomorrow.
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Unlike revisiting the Blackout Game -- or Jomboy's breakdown of Mark Buehrle's perfect game, which he posted today -- there is more juice left in this particular lime. The combination of zero sports and cross-sport appeal means that more outlets can throw their resources into turning up unique stories about Jordan's season with the Barons. Some samples:
*James Fegan talked to various Birmingham Barons employees about the insanity of the season. A running theme was that it was exhausting while it happened, but a letdown after it ended.
*Rogelio Nunez, a middle infielder who topped out at Double-A with Birmingham, learned English in large part because Jordan kept paying him to do so.
*Tom Verducci expounded on the sentiment Barons manager Terry Francona shared in "The Last Dance." Both believe that Jordan could have reached the majors with some legitimacy, even if only as a singles hitter.
*Scott Merkin has stories from Hawk Harrelson, Herm Schneider, Michael Huff and Bill Melton.
The biggest takeaway from all these explorations into Jordan's baseball career is that nobody seems to have a bad thing to say about his attempt to make it. It'd be easy to knock him for his lack of results, pointing to the darker side of his personality that his basketball career revealed, but he seemed to respect the game, and those trying to make the same climb.
While he might've been a tyrant and bully on the court, he seemed to think he earned the right due to past accomplishments and present work ethic. That's suspect reasoning, but there's at least some consistency in his mental approach. When he turned to baseball, a field in which he was devoid of accomplishments, the stories of teammate terror are nowhere to be found, because he apparently acted as though he still needed to earn everything.
(Photo by Cliff Welch/Icon Sportswire)
