Derek Jeter Says Michael Jordan Was Better Than Credited

On April 24, 1994, at Greer Stadium in Nashville, Birmingham Barons right fielder Michael Jordan hit a single off Nashville Xpress pitcher Joe Norris.

That was one of the hits. Jordan had signed a Minor League Baseball contract with the Chicago White Sox on February 7, 1994, after retiring from the NBA following three straight championships with the Chicago Bulls. He was assigned to the Barons, the White Sox Double-A affiliate, and played 127 games in the outfield. He finished the year batting .202, with three home runs, 51 RBIs, 30 stolen bases, 51 walks, and 114 strikeouts, a total that led the team. Later he batted .252 for the Scottsdale Scorpions in the Arizona Fall League. On March 18, 1995, amid the MLB strike, he announced his return to the Bulls.

Years afterward, a shortstop who built a Hall of Fame career with the New York Yankees spoke about that season in a recorded interview that has circulated under the title “Derek Jeter Says Michael Jordan Could Really Play Baseball.” Derek Jeter did not treat the .202 as a punch line. He treated it as evidence.

“A lot of people laugh. ‘Oh, Michael was this. Michael was that.’ Michael Jordan played baseball in Little League, and then the next time he played, he’s playing in Double-A baseball,” Jeter said. The gap between those two levels is the point he kept returning to. Jordan had played baseball at Emsley A. Laney High School and quit two games into his senior year to focus on basketball. The next organized baseball he played at any length was Double-A.

Jeter walked through the professional ladder the way a player who climbed it remembers it. “Now, when you play in the minor leagues, once you get to Double-A—the biggest jump, right? I just want, for everyone listening, you know, you have rookie ball, you have Low-A, you have High-A, you have Double-A, you have Triple-A, then you get to the major leagues.” Then the sentence that has traveled farthest from the clip: “Once you get to Double-A, the biggest jump is from A to Double-A. If you can play in Double-A baseball, you can play in the major leagues.”

Jordan went straight into that level and hit .202. The current major-league batting average sits at .243. Jeter refused the easy reading of the gap. “Everyone’s like, ‘Oh, you hit .200.’ And that’s not easy to do.” He offered his own first professional number as proof. “I hit, my first year…I was, you mentioned, a high school Player of the Year. I went to rookie ball, hit .202. And had a great two weeks. I was hot the last two weeks to get just over .200, man.”