Maybe This Guy <i> Is </i> the Greatest There Ever Was

When Michael Jordan, the world’s greatest basketball player, opted out of his sport and elected to play baseball, the sporting community, and particularly the sporting press, was widely divided in its reaction. About 75% were outraged and hoped he would fall on his bald pate. I mean, who did he think he was?

After all, one sport and one sport alone was good enough for Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Henry Aaron and Willie Mays, wasn’t it? What was this guy trying to prove?

Most of the sport itself snickered behind its hand. Relief pitchers allowed as how they had a better chance of playing the pivot for the Chicago Bulls than Michael Jordan had of succeeding in baseball. They couldn’t wait to show him a major league changeup. It was predicted he would throw his back out trying to hit one.

They felt intensely territorial about their sport. Their thrust was, go back to that sport played on wood floors, Michael. You can’t slam dunk a baseball. Besides, it’s too small for a guy used to the dimensions of a basketball. Michael had delusions of grandeur. Major league baseball was not mumbletypeg or one-o’cat in the park.

You had to feel that, secretly, some of them were afraid Jordan would show them--and the game--up. What if he came in and started hitting three home runs a game? What if he was the world’s greatest athlete?

I have a diametrically opposite viewpoint from my learned colleagues. I hope Michael Jordan succeeds beyond his wildest expectations.

Consider this: If you went into any part of this country where young athletes congregate and you came upon a youngster who gave indication he could be superbly talented in any sport he chose, what sport do you think he would settle on?

No contest. Slam dunk. It would be basketball. Baseball, I have to think, would be a poor third. Maybe fourth.

It wasn’t always this way in this country. Every red-blooded American boy once hankered to be a bona fide major league baseball star.

It’s no longer true. The sandlot diamond is disappearing. The game is thriving mostly in the Caribbean.

I don’t know what the population of the Dominican Republic is, but every second kid seems to be in a baseball lineup somewhere. If Cubans were allowed to play here, they’d have to call balls and strikes in Spanish.

So, my notion is, Michael Jordan honors baseball--ennobles it, if you will. He’s reversing a trend, is what he’s doing. And he’s not opting for golf, as so many thought he would. Or for football, or for tennis, or for boxing, at which, given his speed and power and peripheral vision, I would guess he would be terrific. No, what Michael is dreaming about is becoming a star in our national pastime. And this is no Walter Mitty. This is one of the great athletic specimens of his time.

You know how kids buy his shoes at his urging, down his soft drink, purchase tank tops with his number? You think they’re not going to pay attention to his choice of sport?

It’s my notion baseball couldn’t buy that kind of endorsement. So, far from running him out of here at the end of a sharp pen, the game should have a light in the window. They should light candles and pray that he succeeds.

It’s a switch that has never been notably successful. The most publicized of failures in antiquity was that of Jim Thorpe. There wasn’t much Jim Thorpe couldn’t do with a football. He could kick it, throw it, run with it or block it with the best who ever lived. There wasn’t much he couldn’t do on a track, either. He could throw the discus and javelin, jump high, run fast. The King of Sweden, no less, once proclaimed him the world’s greatest athlete--and there was no argument.

But that little old major league curveball--what Roy Campanella once proclaimed “Public Enemy No. 1”--proved his undoing. The Baseball Encyclopedia lists Thorpe’s six-year major league career as a frustrating experiment in which he hit .252 (not bad by today’s standards but abysmal by his era’s standards). You find only seven home runs there, 82 runs batted in and a whole lot of strikeouts--122 in his relatively few at-bats.

Track stars tend to do better in football than baseball. A great base stealer is demoralizing--but first he has to get on base. But there are few basketball players who made it in baseball. Chuck Connors and Gene Conley, neither a big court star, played in the majors. Jordan is the only superstar to switch.

So, Michael opting for the grand old game should be saluted at the highest levels. First of all, he’s putting his sport’s reputation on the line. That is admirable. Great actors don’t tackle ballet. Great musicians don’t play Hamlet.

But Jordan, at the age of 31, is delving into the arts and mysteries of baseball. It’s a game in which the ability to hover in the air and circle the playing field for long periods of time is of minimal usefulness.

Still, he did pick baseball. It reminds me of the oft-repeated observation of the late Fresco Thompson when he was signing rookies for the Dodgers. Whenever a kid would come in the office and say “Mr. Thompson, I think I can make it in one of two sports but I’m torn between pro football and major league baseball.”

“Kid,” Fresco would growl,” what do you want--a career or a limp?”

Michael was not in a sport where the occupational hazard was a limp. But he was in one where the ball was full of air. And was hard to miss--30 inches in circumference vs. a baseball’s nine.

Baseball should be glad it’s got him. I bet hockey wishes he could skate.