I played basketball with him - I remember trying to set a pick for him in a pickup game, only to have him tell me, 'I don't need that.' Our daughter Chloe will turn 25 this August - she was born right after Michael rubbed my wife's belly for good luck. "Not a day goes by that I don't think about that '94 season," Bloom said. Just ask Curt Bloom, who's still in Birmingham, calling Barons games for the 27th straight season. Just like that opening night crowd in '94, they walk away from the memory mildly disappointed. 202, they conclude that his baseball career was a bust. Nowadays, sports fans look upon his foray into baseball as a whim, and when they look up his numbers and see that he batted. Jordan never made it to the bigs, but at least he could console himself with his and the Chicago Bulls' second NBA three-peat. Of the players on that '94 roster, 20 were either coming down from, or going up to the majors. The skipper, Terry Francona, is now in his 20th year of managing in the bigs, with Hall of Fame credentials that include the breaking of the Boston Red Sox's 86-year curse in 2004, another World Series trophy three years later and another trip to the Fall Classic with his current team, the Indians. Jordan is long gone from Birmingham, and so are most of the players and coaches who wore the Barons uniform that year. For the night, and for the record, he went 0-for-3 in a 10-3 loss to the Lookouts. They watched him fly out in his first at-bat against Chattanooga starter John Courtright. 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. After all, he started quite a feeding frenzy on the night of April 8, 1994, at the Hoover Met when he made his official professional baseball debut. There was a certain delicious irony to calling it The Michael Jordan Banquet Hall. 202-hitting right fielder for the 1994 Barons. The dining facility? Well, that bore the name of a certain. 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. 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. The Barons don't play at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium anymore. Curt Bloom, Birmingham Barons play-by-play announcer, July 30, 1994 Fly ball deep to left again, Ratliff going back, back to the warning track, looking up. 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. two of his three at-bats were near homers. With the Barons leading 5-1, Jordan steps in for the fourth time. Get all the latest updates for "The Last Dance" her e. You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browserįrom the archives: The true story behind Michael Jordan's brief-but-promising baseball careerĮditor's note: This story on Michael Jordan's brief tenure with the Birmingham Barons was originally published on April 5, 2019.
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