Michael Jordan, who played for a Chicago White Sox minor league affiliate, was an exceptional baseball talent as a 12-year-old.
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Michael Jordan was exceptionally gifted growing up. His parents and other people around him quickly understood that the little boy was destined for things far greater.
But for James and Deloris Jordan, MJ wasn’t a basketball player. For them, Larry was going to be a pro basketball star. Instead, they wanted MJ to become a baseball pro.
To their credit, they weren’t way off. Michael Jordan was undeniably good at baseball. In fact, he played in the minor league after retiring from the NBA in 1993. His Airness joined the Birmingham Barons squad, a Chicago White Sox affiliate, and played with them for a season.
However, long before this stint, precisely when Michael was just 12, people believed he would make it to the major league as an adult.
Michael Jordan was the best baseball player in North Carolina
In the book Michael Jordan: The Life, Roland Lazenby detailed MJ’s tryst with baseball. At 12, the Bulls legend dominated ballparks.
He was quite literally capable of playing at any position. Jordan was fast, faster than most kids his age. So getting on bases came naturally to him.
In addition, he also possessed the skill to hit a ball far, far away. Jordan was capable of hitting homers even in bigger parks.
12-year-old Jordan was like the current Shohei Ohtani. He could pitch and he could hit. On one occasion, he pitched for innings and stuck out 12 batters in that duration. Perhaps he had a wicked slider or maybe a super fast fastball.
Even his father James, who wasn’t easy to please, believed that Jordan was capable of going to the majors. In the same year, when MJ was 12, he was named ‘Mr. Baseball in North Carolina.’ With Jordan often playing as a Shortstop, his baseball coach back then compared him to Derek Jeter.
Michael’s success in the little league came to a swift end
12 was the magic year for MJ in terms of baseball. But come 13, things changed. All of a sudden, he wasn’t the best in the state.
Just a year after being named Mr. Baseball, Michael wasn’t even a starter. He got only a handful of opportunities to play. The shock of being a star and then being a nobody left a deep impact on the young boy’s psyche.
Perhaps that was one of the reasons MJ so easily gave up on his MLB dreams. Even in his stint with the Barons. Jordan played one year and then bid the sport a careless adieu.
Maybe that one year reminded him of turning 13. How a star a year earlier was now merely a small piece in the game. And Michael Jordan was a lot of things, small piece wasn’t one of them.
Also read: Kobe Bryant vs LeBron James – The Finals We Never Saw, Yet a Rivalry of a Lifetime
