[GoodSports] Movie Highlight: Jordan Rides the Bus

"I had a plan to play baseball. That was a dream my father and I concocted after we first won a championship. And if I was going to do it, I better do it now. And with the death of my father, that seemed to be the right time to make that choice." 

On Saturday I caught this 30 for 30 documentary about Michael Jordan's 1993 retirement from basketball and subsequent venture into professional baseball. 

I know a lot of people aren't huge fans of Michael Jordan the Human Being. Can't say I blame them. I've heard loads of stories about how he's a jerk, how he's got this gambling problem, how he's slept with five million women and how Tiger Woods has nothing on him, stuff like that. I know people personally who've had some pretty crappy experiences because of him. I don't know that much about his gambling, although I've heard thirdhand stories. Same for the sleeping around.

I just don't care about that stuff. Don't know what that says about me, but I don't. Dude's human. Spectacularly so. The gambling and sex stuff—some people like to live their life that way. Good for him. Who am I—who is anybody—to judge him? We're all messed up in our own special ways.

But here's why I care a little bit about Michael Jordan: He is the greatest player in the history of basketball, and I'm a sports fan. And in 1993, he willingly walked away from the game when he was unstoppable, when he was the best ever, when he could destroy you at will. And he followed that with an even more ludicrous announcement: He was going to play baseball.

To fully appreciate the gravity of all that, you have to understand something about athletes:

To most of them, and especially to a competitor like Jordan, their legacy is everything. Jordan had just won three straight NBA titles. Him retiring from basketball was one thing. Going to play baseball, arguably the world's most impossible sport, made him an absolute joke.

A clown.

You think the crap LeBron's been getting for his postseason performances is bad? Imagine what the bloggers and the oh-so-witty media and you with all your hilarious jokes would be saying about Michael Jordan. 

And yeah, he got it bad. Sports Illustrated, then America's defining sports authority, painted him as a joke, as a narcissistic athlete who believed himself a god, capable of just dropping into baseball and playing it as well as he'd played basketball. 

That's not what he was. Everyone who spent time around him said he worked his a-- off to get better, to get good, that he took the game seriously and carried himself humbly, all too aware of how hard all of this was going to be. 

And no, it wasn't pretty. Jordan hit .202 in his one minor-league season. Struck out about a million times. 

But he also stole 30 bases. And he hit .265 in the fall league, against better competition than he'd faced all summer.

Writers were falling over themselves by the end of it, recanting what they'd said earlier and saying that he was a completely different ballplayer. Many said that given a few years—it takes even the best of the best a few years—Michael Jordan would have made it to the majors. 

"I gave the game of baseball a true effort. I wasn't there making money. I wasn't endorsing any product. I was truly there for the love of the game." 

Of course, in 1994 baseball went on strike, and Jordan, a true player, refused to crossover. He returned to basketball.

And he promptly won three more consecutive NBA titles. 

So yeah. He made himself look ridiculous. But he lived a dream he and his father had since he was a boy. The most ludicrous thing about it all? In his pro baseball stint, he played outfield, meaning the way he hit determined pretty much everything.

In high school, he'd mostly been a pitcher. 

Maybe he's not the greastest person. But come on. Appreciate the good with me. There's good everywhere. I'm not saying that, in his personal life, what he did in 1993, risking his legacy and all that, is going to make up for however he's wrong those who love him. I'm not talking about that. 

I'm talking about his guts. He did what so many of us would be terrified to do.

He quit the thing he was best at, the thing that gave him his identity, and risked making a complete and total mockery of himself. No—he did make a complete and total mockery of himself. But he also stuck to it, stayed committed, and by the end of it all, even though he quit, he acknowledged that it was harder than he'd thought it would be, and that he really did belong on the basketball court. 

Even then, he had people apologizing, recanting, saying, You could have made it. 

Meanwhile, all of us basketball fans are just glad Bugs Bunny and Bill Murray showed him the light.