‘Craziness on a Daily Basis’- Michael Jordan’s White Sox Teammates Remember His 1994 Season
In late 1993, Chicago White Sox outfielder Michael Huff got a strange call from the team’s owner, Jerry Reinsdorf. “He said, ‘We want you to teach someone how to catch and throw a baseball,’” Huff remembers. When Huff asked who his student would be, Reinsdorf wouldn’t say.
It turned out to be Michael Jordan. Unbeknownst to not just the public but his future teammates, the retired three-time NBA champion wanted to give baseball a shot, despite not having played the sport in more than a decade, when he was in high school. For months, Huff, the trainer Herm Schneider and others quietly worked Jordan into baseball shape before he announced in February that he would be reporting to White Sox spring training. From there, Jordan played a season with the Birmingham Barons, the White Sox’ AA minor league team, and then in fall league with the Scottsdale Scorpions before coming out of retirement to return to the Bulls, amounting to one of the oddest sagas of his labyrinthian career.
This unexpected detour is covered in Sunday night’s episode of The Last Dance, the ESPN docuseries that has become a cultural phenomenon sin…
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