Jordan Leaves to Explore Greener Pastures

I know nobody wants me to write anything more about sports. My own New Year’s resolution was to go the next 12 months without once mentioning anybody who ever wore a jockstrap.

(In particular, men.)

But you know what? I can’t help it. I’m hooked. Because today is the day Michael Jordan retires from basketball, and Michael Jordan is greater than the game. He is a shoe, a cologne, a cartoon. He is a basketball player of today, a baseball player of yesterday and a golfer of tomorrow--a man for three seasons. He is a fashion model and a role model. If he cared to, I expect Michael Jordan could play first violin for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The guy doesn’t play second fiddle to anybody.

Here is how Chicago’s media would report the news--in this order--if these four things happened this morning:

1. Jordan retires.

2. Clinton convicted.

3. Japan invades Hawaii . . . again.

4. Iraq named 51st state.

Big. The man is big. Bigger than Oprah before the diet. Bigger than Mayor Daley, Refrigerator Perry and Roger Ebert rolled into one. How big? I’ll tell you how big. He sticks out his tongue--and people think it’s cute. Or, he makes a TV commercial in which women sit on a park bench checking out his pants, wondering aloud about his underpants--and people think it’s cute. Not crude--cute!

Michael Jordan is a natural-born crowd-pleaser who has a reputation as a gentleman. That’s why the gentleman is a champ.

*

My first paragraph was changed by the news editors I now work for, the last time Michael Jordan retired. Here’s what happened:

I was in Chicago in 1993, covering the baseball playoffs. The White Sox were in contention for the World Series, a sure sign that God has a sense of humor. I saw Jordan in a luxury box, watching the Sox play. And then we heard Jordan would hold a news conference the next day, because he wanted to BE a Sox, or a Sock, or whatever you call one.

Michael Jordan was retiring. It was big news, bigger than Oprah before the diet, bigger than Mayor . . . wait, I already did those lines.

Anyhow, I hastily wrote a story, which my sports editors thought was so important, they sent it to the news editors, who put it on Page 1.

Here was my first paragraph:

CHICAGO -- Michael Jordan is retiring.

That’s it. Four words. As concise as it gets. In four words, I told everybody everything. I bet 99% of the U.S. population could have read that one paragraph and understood the entire story, without needing a fifth word. I fully expected to win a Pulitzer Prize that year for best first paragraph.

But these damn news people . . . I give them who and what, and they demand where and when. So, they changed my first sentence, without consulting me, to something like: “Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest basketball player who ever played basketball, allegedly reportedly will announce his retirement today at a news conference in Chicago, a large city in Illinois, according to informed, reliable, dependable, fairly accurate sources.”

A real page-burner. One of those sentences Evelyn Wood would need 60 seconds to read.

Next day, young Prince Mike of Nike sat in a suburban gymnasium and told us that he would never dribble again. He didn’t want to stop and smell the roses . . . he wanted to mow his lawn. I am NOT exaggerating this time. Jordan actually said that retirement would give him a chance to do what regular people do, like mow the lawn.

Pretty funny. First of all, for six months of the year in Chicago, you can’t even see a lawn. Just snow. And as soon as it became spring, that Jordan lawn must have grown pretty long, because Dad was in Alabama, playing baseball.

I don’t know who cut his grass. I suspect underpaid Chicago Bulls teammate Steve Kerr, for $4.20 an hour.

*

Well, there goes Mr. Jordan. Gone for good this time. Poor Chicago. Athlete of the big shoulders, opponent butcher to the world . . . things there will never be the same.

He was the ultimate basketball player. His position was point god.

I believe if Mike--and baseball, and its fans--had been more patient, he would have become a fine baseball player in time. He would have hit at least .250 in the majors eventually, which would have earned him, oh, $50 million a year? Sixty? You know baseball.

Michael Jordan is retiring. That’s my last sentence this time. Oh, except for this one: I have seen a lot of athletes, and he’s the greatest I ever saw.

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com