On February 7, 1994, Michael Jordan announced he was going to play professional baseball. He would turn 31 that month, and he had not played the game since he quit two games into his senior year of high school.
He made his debut for the Double-A Birmingham Barons on April 8. A 13-game hitting streak early on left him batting .327. Then the hits dried up. His average for May was .165.
His hitting coach, Mike Barnett, treated him as a hitter who stood too far off the plate. “I moved him closer to the plate and got him to stride forward into the ball and use his hips and those long arms of his,” Barnett said.
Jordan took the instruction. “Michael would go after it five times a day,” Barnett said. He hit in the cage before breakfast and again after games. His hands blistered and bled.
It still wasn’t enough. On July 29 his average was down to .186.
The manager, Terry Francona, remembered a stretch a couple of months into the season when Jordan got “real frustrated.” So he and Barnett sat Jordan down. “We told him that you’ve earned the right to enjoy what you’re doing,” Francona said. “I told him, ‘Just try to enjoy getting better,’ and he did that.”
The coaches pointed to what was improving. Barnett rated Jordan’s throwing arm a 20 on the scouts’ 20-to-80 scale in spring training and a 50 by August.
Francona saw a different man from the one on television. “It was a different person than what you saw in the NBA because he didn’t dominate the league,” he said. “He enjoyed the idea of trying to master something.”
Jordan finished the season at .202. In the Arizona Fall League that autumn, against better competition, he hit .255.
“I do think with another 1,000 at-bats, he would’ve made it,” Francona said.