This Jordan Fuss Is Embarrassing for Silly Critics

Michael Jordan has embarrassed nobody. Michael Jordan has disgraced nothing. All the man did was play some baseball. He didn’t ask to captain a nuclear submarine. He didn’t ask to be President of the United States for a two-week tryout. He didn’t ask to drive in the Indy 500, where he might kill somebody. He didn’t ask to do open-heart surgery in place of somebody’s regular doctor. He asked if he could play some baseball.

We have to get over this overromanticized notion of a baseball field being an “emerald chessboard” where all the young rooks grow up to be bishops and kings. Baseball drips with two things--sentimentality and tobacco juice. You would have thought Jordan had soiled hallowed ground by trespassing onto the Grapefruit League grass, or contaminated a sterile lab. Jordan drew stares like somebody leaving muddy footprints in a Japanese restaurant.

I never heard anybody howl that Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway should steer clear of the acting profession during “Blue Chips” and leave the Thespian trade to trained experts like Nick Nolte and Mary McDonnell. I never heard of Ronald Reagan or Gopher from “Love Boat” being disqualified from politics because they had once been actors. I never felt America’s outrage that a football player, Herschel Walker, had the audacity to think he could push a bobsled, or that Paul Newman planned to race an auto.

But, ohhhh, heaven forbid Michael Jordan should see if his athletic prowess was such that he could excel at another sport before he was too old to find out. JORDAN AND WHITE SOX ARE EMBARRASSING BASEBALL, cried the cover of Sports Illustrated’s issue of March 14. Funny, but I never heard of an editor from Sports Illustrated telling one of their writers: “Only write about stuff you know.”

How else could Jordan learn but to try? Must he be mocked for not double-dipping during his prime, the way Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders did, hopping on copters between stadia? (Anybody notice that neither Bo nor Neon Deion has ever won a professional championship in anything?) Must the iron-willed Mike endure ridicule because he goes hitless in his first pro at- bats? If the majors had pulled that on Willie Mays, he never would have lasted beyond his first April.

First time up in a spring intrasquad game, Michael Jordan stroked a liner to left field. He was robbed by a diving, backhanded catch. Now, I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t sound to me like someone who wouldn’t know a Louisville Slugger bat from a Louis XVI antique chair. Far be it for me to dabble in revisionist history, but let me tell you something, baseball lovers. Air Jordan doubles in his first at-bat, Mel Allen wouldn’t have been the only one out there shouting: “How a-BOUT that?!”

Here is baseball, a game that has given us such illustrious individuals as Herb Washington, a professional pinch-runner, and we can’t even give Michael Jordan a chance? Come on. Where is the harm? Baseball couldn’t afford a few weeks to find out if a 6 foot 6, supremely conditioned specimen could catch a ball or swing a stick? Doubters told one-handed Jim Abbott he couldn’t play, either. He could play.

Some of my more righteous brothers in the ink industry have sure had a field day with Michael. So have certain baseball professionals, like the anonymous American League manager who told that magazine: “This guy thinks he can become a hitter in a couple of months. It’s a disgrace to the game.” It is?

No, a disgrace to a game is letting one of your outfielders pitch when there are paying customers in the stands. A disgrace is a 65-year-old man kicking dirt on an authority figure’s shoes. A disgrace is tossing a firecracker near some fans. A disgrace is spitting indoors. A disgrace is saying of a fire-scorched town, “Let it burn.” A disgrace is an umpire telling a California Angel batter he’s a .220-hitting chump and doesn’t deserve a call.

A disgrace is a manager’s gambling, a general manager’s bigotry and an owner’s treating men like dogs and dogs like men. A disgrace is dumping ice water on another human being. A disgrace is televising a World Series after midnight on a school night. A disgrace is charging a family of four $100 for tickets and hot dogs. A disgrace is Don Baylor telling angry Dodgers that if they don’t like playing rough, they should “wear a dress.”

Michael Jordan, a disgrace?

All that Michael did was what everyone in the world should do. He tried. He didn’t sit around counting his money. He didn’t procrastinate. He didn’t slouch around the house, daydreaming like Walter Mitty, picturing himself at the plate against Roger Clemens, wondering: “Could I have ever been a baseball player?” He tried. The man actually, honestly, physically tried.

I have always been curious whether I could have been a doctor. Nobody is stopping me from going to med school. I could go to law school. Or truck-driving school (as so many readers believe I should). Or even drama school. If what Shaq did was acting, man, I could do Chekhov.

Could I become a Chicago Bull? Could I become a Dodger? Well, the problem there is, they take one look at this Mike and say, “No way.” Whereas, they take one look at that other Mike and say, “Hmmm. Maybe.”

I seriously doubt Michael Jordan could play baseball in the majors. Except, of course, for the San Diego Padres.

But he gave it a shot. So what? He wasn’t embarrassed. I wasn’t embarrassed. Were you embarrassed? Baseball supposedly was embarrassed. People sure do embarrass easy these days.