Michael Jordan at Wrigley Field
On April 7, 1994, MJ battled the Cubbies.
“It’s going to be a fun year down here.”
— Minor league outfielder Michael Jordan about playing for the AA Birmingham Barons
Go to a Sox game in the late 90s and after the THOMAS 45 jerseys, and then VENTURA 23, GUILLEN 11, McDOWELL 29 and maybe even JACKSON 8, you were bound to see a scattering of JORDAN 45 jerseys throughout Comiskey Park. Jordan’s choice in March of 1995 to wear #45 for his Bulls comeback instead of #23 solidified the popularity of his #45 White Sox jersey.
“We’ve sold a lot of those White Sox jerseys with his number on it,” one Mitchell & Ness manager said during the first week of MJ’s Bulls comeback.
But unless that baseball jersey was for the double-A Birmingham Barons, the MJ White Sox jersey was even more niche than it already seemed.
That’s because he only wore it in competition one time: April 7, 1994, at Wrigley Field in the Windy City Classic.
Back before Major League Baseball started interleague play in 1997, the only way the Cubs and White Sox could play in a game that counted was if they each reached the World Series. That only happened once: in 1906. They did have a few regular exhibition series over the decades1, and in 1985 a new series began: the Windy City Classic, alternating ballparks, starting at Comiskey.
Competitively-speaking, the series was largely a bust — the Sox went 10-0-2, ending with a home-and-home in 1995. The teams combined to make the postseason only twice during this run, the Cubs in ‘89 and the Sox in ‘93. (Oh, ye foul strike of ‘94!)
I don’t have a single memory of 11 of those 12 Crosstown Classic games, as we called them. That 1994 game though.
That 1994 game.
Now that was an all-timer.
That’s because in a loaded White Sox lineup with 1993 AL MVP Frank Thomas and two recent All-Stars in Ozzie Guillen and Robin Ventura, the star attraction was a 31-year-old minor league outfielder who just happened to be perhaps the most famous person on Earth.
Jordan’s love of baseball was well known. What gave him a smooth entry-point was Jerry Reinsdorf. MJ took batting practice at Comiskey in 1990 and was one of the stars for a 1991 TV ad for the new Comiskey Park. Chicago reporter Cheryl Raye-Stout had long discussed baseball with Jordan. As she recalled:
“He said, ‘When I retire from basketball, I’m going to play baseball.’ And I said, ‘Michael, you’ll be like 40 years old. You’re going to ride the buses?’ and he said, ‘I want to play baseball. That’s one of my goals.’”
Famously, the night before Jordan announced his retirement from the Bulls, he was at Comiskey to throw out the first pitch of Game 1 of the 1993 ALCS. Not long after, through her connections to both the Bulls and the White Sox, Cheryl broke the news that MJ was going to give baseball a try:
“Somebody I knew from both the White Sox and the Bulls saw me at a game and says, ‘Cheryl, Michael’s going to play baseball.’ If I had not had that conversation with him the year before, I probably would have said, ‘Yeah right.’ But I knew how he felt about baseball. So it didn’t surprise me at all.”
While the Bulls season rolled on without him, and Nike ran conspiracy theory “Johnny Kilroy” ads with Steve Martin suggesting that MJ had faked his retirement, Jordan was taking daily BP at Comiskey. He signed with the Sox on February 7, 1994; the Sox assigned him to AA Birmingham on March 30.
“I went through all of our rosters … and the only spot where I could see him competing and getting a chance to play was ... in Birmingham,” then-Sox GM Ron Schueler told me in 2020.
On April 7, the day that his soon-to-be Barons teammates played opening day, Jordan batted sixth and played right field for the White Sox. Among the 37,825 fans at Wrigley that day was future Fox Sports 1 host Danny Parkins, who sat in right field thanks to his father.
“I thought my dad was a super hero for getting those tickets,” Parkins told me in 2021. Fans received an MJ baseball poster from Nike. Parkins has it framed. As for the game itself?
“It was just... different,” he recalled. “Unlike any sporting event I had ever been to then or since. Everyone was just watching one guy. The game didn’t matter but him playing catch between innings *mattered*. I was just a kid but could still sense it.”
We all knew Jordan would look great in those iconic black Sox jerseys. The question was how he would look in the field and at the dish. Well, he handled himself quite nicely! Jordan caught the first flyball that his came his way, and went 2-5 from the plate with two RBI and a run scored, leading a Sox comeback after the team fell behind 4-0 in the 3rd. His RBI single in the 4th was part of a three-run inning, and his RBI double the next inning tied the game.
Neither team scored from there and the game was called a 4-4 tie after 10 innings. That’s a score few remember on a day no one ever forgets.
“I wanted to prove something for myself,” Jordan said after the game. “I wanted to prove something to everyone who came out to see me.”
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For more on MJ’s baseball career, read my 1996 piece “There Could Never Be An 8-Peat” and my full Twitter thread here.
And for MJ’s 1995 comeback:
"I’m Back": The true story of Michael Jordan's 1995 baseball comeback
(Note: Today is the 30th anniversary of Michael Jordan officially returning to the Bulls from baseball with his “I’m back” fax on March 18, 1995. This article originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago in 2020 for the 25th anniversary of Jordan’s comeback. With that website gone following the launch of CHSN, I am re-publishing it here so that it can be o…
For a great history of Sox-Cubs, see this 2023 breakdown from Brett Ballantini of South Side Sox. Another fantastic history of the rivalry came last May from Linze Rice of Block Club Chicago, featuring quotes from yours truly!