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Speaker 1: researching this season of Flashback. Lectures like Playball, the rise
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Speaker 1: Com slash As. Before we start today's episode, please be
Speaker 1: sure to support Flashback by rating and leaving a review
Speaker 1: for us right here in your podcast app. A special
Speaker 1: shout out this week to our listener Ruby two Shoes,
Speaker 1: who got last week's pop quiz correct. The question was
Speaker 1: what event helped lead to billions and extra revenue for
Speaker 1: the NBA and you're all about to find that out.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, do you think you're getting the hang
Speaker 1: of history's unintended consequences? And if so, answer this question
Speaker 1: about next week's episode for a chance to win a
Speaker 1: shout out of your own Ready fingers on buzzers. What
Speaker 1: chronic physical ailment did Adolph Hitler suffer from that led
Speaker 1: him to seek some rather unorthodox and highly consequential medical treatment.
Speaker 1: Think you know the answer, Take your best guests and
Speaker 1: leave it as a comment in your podcast app along
Speaker 1: with your five star review. It's the best of times,
Speaker 1: it's the worst of times. As I record this, both
Speaker 1: the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball are sidelined
Speaker 1: because of the coronavirus, but the two professional sports leagues
Speaker 1: are hardly in the same position. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: you've got basketball. NBA salaries have skyrocketed in the past
Speaker 1: five years. The average player makes above seven million dollars
Speaker 1: per season, which makes the NBA the highest paid sports
Speaker 1: league in the world, and basketball is also now the
Speaker 1: most popular sport in the largest country in the world.
Speaker 1: At one point, for a billion basketball crazed people in
Speaker 1: a country and economy that's growing. It's unbelievable passion that
Speaker 1: people have for the sport and for the NBA in China,
Speaker 1: And on the other hand, you've got baseball. People just
Speaker 1: don't seem to be as interested in the sport as
Speaker 1: they used to be. Last year's World Series was the
Speaker 1: least watched in history. So is this a wake up
Speaker 1: call for Major League Baseball? Kind of? The World Series
Speaker 1: continue to compete effectively last year. According to Forbes magazine,
Speaker 1: for the first time ever, the average value of an
Speaker 1: NBA team is worth more than the average value of
Speaker 1: a Major League Baseball team. There are lots of reasons
Speaker 1: for this reversal of fortune, from marketing to a lack
Speaker 1: of star power to the mastery of social media. But
Speaker 1: if you had to pick one fateful moment when everything changed,
Speaker 1: when baseball and basketball started to go in different directions,
Speaker 1: will might well be something that happened twenty five springs ago.
Speaker 1: That's the moment when one of baseball's worst players decided
Speaker 1: to give up on his dream rather than to be
Speaker 1: a scab during the game's worst labor strike. Minor league
Speaker 1: ball players have to give up on their dreams all
Speaker 1: the time, but this minor league ball player was not
Speaker 1: your ordinary athlete. He was also the greatest brand ambassador
Speaker 1: that the sport of basketball has ever known, and Baseball's
Speaker 1: loss proved to be Basketball's destiny making game. I'm Shawn
Speaker 1: Braswell today on Flashback, a tale of one windy city
Speaker 1: and one remarkable player whose fateful decision helped alter the
Speaker 1: fate of two sports. And a very special thanks to
Speaker 1: our guests today who joined us via phone or provided
Speaker 1: their own local recording. Is during the global health crisis
Speaker 1: in the shelter in Place order, Let's go back in
Speaker 1: time twenty nine years for a moment. It's June. If
Speaker 1: you've watched The Last Dance, ESPN's documentary film on Michael
Speaker 1: Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, then you've probably already seen
Speaker 1: this footage the celebration house, Peagne and the Chicago Locker
Speaker 1: roll and they are celebrating in the Chicago. That's the
Speaker 1: Fulls the Lakers. In five, Michael Jordan and the Chicago
Speaker 1: Bulls won their first NBA championship. Five months later, just
Speaker 1: north of Chicago, in Minneapolis, the Minnesota Twins won their
Speaker 1: second World Series Baseball championship in dramatic fashion. That's Twins
Speaker 1: are gonna wins. That's twins and it's a it's a one.
Speaker 1: Game seven of that World Series between the Twins and
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Braves was watched by fifty million viewers, double
Speaker 1: the number that watched Game seven of last year's World Series,
Speaker 1: and thirty million more than watched Michael Jordan's and the
Speaker 1: Bulls beat the Lakers that year. So Jordan's first championship
Speaker 1: might have made for a good story, but it was
Speaker 1: baseball that truly had America's attention in But behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: trouble was brewing in baseball. Fay Vincent, a Yale educated
Speaker 1: lawyer and the former head of Columbia Pictures, was an
Speaker 1: unusual choice to be the commissioner of Baseball. He was short, balding,
Speaker 1: and wore large, oversized glasses. He looked like he should
Speaker 1: be the league's accountant, and in his first year's commissioner
Speaker 1: in Vincent was tested as few commissioners have ever been.
Speaker 1: For the first time in twenty seven years, a World
Speaker 1: Series game will be played in Candle Stick Park. The
Speaker 1: Battle of the Bay continues Game three of the Night
Speaker 1: nine A World Series, the Oakland Athletics against the San
Speaker 1: Francisco Giants, I'm al Michael's less than two minutes later
Speaker 1: this happening, he fails to get Dave Parker at second phase,
Speaker 1: so the Oakland A's take take happening. A six point
Speaker 1: nine magnitude earthquake hit the Bay Area right before Game
Speaker 1: three of the World Series in October. I'm a little
Speaker 1: run or nine and I'm not your right here, but
Speaker 1: we are. Well. That's the greatest open in the history
Speaker 1: of television, far none. The following day, Fay Vincent addressed
Speaker 1: reporters amid the tragedy, We've made the decision not to
Speaker 1: play tonight. That'd be a decision we made. It's a
Speaker 1: difficult time for San Francisco and indeed for the whole
Speaker 1: Bay Area. The great tragedy is that could coincides with
Speaker 1: our modest little sporting event here. Vincent handled the disaster beautifully.
Speaker 1: He was reasonable, cautious, humble smart. The following season, in
Speaker 1: Vincent was again tested when baseball owners started a lockout
Speaker 1: during spring training in an effort to limit rising player salaries.
Speaker 1: This is Ryan Eckert, historian at Monmouth University and author
Speaker 1: of A Game of Failure. Major League Baseball strike The
Speaker 1: idea of a salary cap started to ender the conversation,
Speaker 1: and Vincent supported the players and being completely against the
Speaker 1: salary cap, and so very quickly he really did not
Speaker 1: ingratiate himself to his employers that his bosses his employers.
Speaker 1: You see, in Major League Baseball, the commissioner is handpicked
Speaker 1: by a very select hiring committee, the owners. They thought
Speaker 1: that Stave Vincent would kind of be on their side,
Speaker 1: having selected him themselves, the owners, And when Vincent came in,
Speaker 1: he really acted much more in the best interests of
Speaker 1: baseball than in the interests of his employers, really, who
Speaker 1: were no one but the owners. The owners can't actually
Speaker 1: fire Vincent, but they started to put enormous pressure on
Speaker 1: him to resign. After months of controversy and speculation, baseball
Speaker 1: commission with faith, Vincent has bowed to management wishes that
Speaker 1: he resigned. Although the owners have not announced their plans
Speaker 1: for reorganization, it seems likely that baseball may never be
Speaker 1: the same. Charlie Rose was right. After Vincent's resignation in
Speaker 1: the owners made a more naked power grab. They installed
Speaker 1: one of their own, Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig, as
Speaker 1: acting commissioner. But the owners were only getting warmed up.
Speaker 1: One of the men behind in fave Vincen's departure was
Speaker 1: one of Bud Sewalk's best friends and a fellow owner,
Speaker 1: Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Ryan Storff. And if you
Speaker 1: recognize that name, it's probably because Ryan Storff is also
Speaker 1: the owner of the Chicago Bulls had a salary caps
Speaker 1: in nine four. Ryan Storff wanted to apply this name
Speaker 1: principal to baseball because that was working out really pretty
Speaker 1: well for him as the owners of As the owner
Speaker 1: of the ball thanks to the salary cap in basketball,
Speaker 1: Ryan Storff paid Michael Jordan's, an all time great player
Speaker 1: at the peak of his powers, less than he paid
Speaker 1: White Sox outfielder George Bell in baseball. So at the
Speaker 1: same time Ryan Storff was helping Leeda Coup to get
Speaker 1: a salary cap in baseball, he was getting a bargain
Speaker 1: on the best player in basketball, a star who would
Speaker 1: in deliver the Bulls their third championship in three years.
Speaker 1: The Bulls three pete was an amazing accomplishment for Jordan's,
Speaker 1: but he was starting to show signs of wear and
Speaker 1: tear from the immense pressure. This is Roland las and By,
Speaker 1: a basketball writer and author of Michael Jordan's The Life.
Speaker 1: The process of winning a three pet was absolutely completely,
Speaker 1: thoroughly exhausting, mentally, emotionally physical in every way, and by
Speaker 1: the summer of Michael Jordan was starting to contemplate a
Speaker 1: career change. You know, his father had long hope that
Speaker 1: Michael might consider switching over and playing some baseball, just
Speaker 1: change up things. His father would tell him, you know,
Speaker 1: you've accomplished everything you can in basketball. So there was
Speaker 1: a lot up in the air. And then something happened
Speaker 1: that summer that would turn Michael Jordan's world upside down,
Speaker 1: and that would put Chicago owner Jerry Ryansdorff in the
Speaker 1: bizarre position of watching his most valuable basketball asset turned
Speaker 1: to one of his lowest performing baseball ones. Do you
Speaker 1: have an interesting tale about unintended consequences from history or
Speaker 1: your own life, Please share it with us by emailing
Speaker 1: flashback at Aussie dot com. That's Flashback at o z
Speaker 1: y dot com. Enjoying this episode, check out the Great
Speaker 1: Courses Plus streaming service. It's an excellent resource to expand
Speaker 1: our knowledge on a variety of subjects like Michael Jordan.
Speaker 1: For instance, in researching this episode of Flashback, I dove
Speaker 1: deep into the lectures Playball, the rise of Baseball as
Speaker 1: America's pastime, the psychology of performance, how to be your
Speaker 1: best in life, and basketball's long shot the three pointer.
Speaker 1: We the Great Courses plus app We can keep our
Speaker 1: minds active, escape into this vast world of information. Watch
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Speaker 1: through our special U r L go to the Great
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Speaker 1: Plus dot Com slash AUSI on July, less than a
Speaker 1: month after watching his son when his third NBA championship,
Speaker 1: fifty year old James Jordan's Michael's father, was driving down
Speaker 1: US Highway seventy four in North Carolina. In Lomberton, North Carolina.
Speaker 1: Mr Jordan's uh had pulled off the side UH two,
Speaker 1: obviously to rest for a while, and he was shot
Speaker 1: to death while in his car and was taken to
Speaker 1: the state of South Carolina and placed into the swamp
Speaker 1: where he was found. James Jordan's murder devastated Michael. He
Speaker 1: was obsessed with it, you know, paying attention to every
Speaker 1: little bit of news that came along, and it made
Speaker 1: a lot of news at the time. Jordan had long
Speaker 1: had a rocky relationship with his father, going back to
Speaker 1: when he was a boy in North Carolina. He was
Speaker 1: the fourth of five children, and his older brother, Larry,
Speaker 1: was a better athlete pack then. It was obvious to
Speaker 1: everyone in the family that the James Jordan's greatly favored
Speaker 1: Larry over Michael, and Michael did not take that particularly well.
Speaker 1: He had great love for his father, but he was
Speaker 1: always angrily trying to prove himself elf to his father
Speaker 1: after that childhood rejection, and that anger pushed Jordan to
Speaker 1: work insanely hard. It really, in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: was the motivation for much of his achievement in sports,
Speaker 1: and Jordan's desire to please his late father would also
Speaker 1: be behind what happened next. In October, Michael Jordan took
Speaker 1: to the baseball field to throw out the first pitch
Speaker 1: at a White Sox playoff game. But Jordan was not
Speaker 1: done making news that night. Let's go quickly to penal.
Speaker 1: Brian Alright, Gregor, breaking story here. The Chicago Bulls have
Speaker 1: called the press conference to tomorrow morning, and there's high
Speaker 1: speculation and report that Michael Jordan will retire from basketball forever.
Speaker 1: The news shock the city of Chicago and the sports world,
Speaker 1: but it made sense to Jordan's He was grieving mightily
Speaker 1: over his father, and the idea that his father had
Speaker 1: wanted him to play baseball, the idea that he had
Speaker 1: unfinished business there. All of those things played into his decision. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: that fall of baseball enjoyed another epic World Series finish.
Speaker 1: Here's a pitch on the way, a swinging a belt
Speaker 1: field pay back Blue Jays, the Blue Jays, the World
Speaker 1: Series champion. Touch a ball, Joe, You'll never hit a
Speaker 1: bigger hole let in your life. That December, the previous
Speaker 1: collective bargaining agreement between the owners and players expired, and
Speaker 1: with Fay Vincent out of the way, Ryan Storff and
Speaker 1: the owners decided to take another crack at getting a
Speaker 1: salary cap for baseball. The owners argued that the lack
Speaker 1: of a salary cap was hurting competition in the game.
Speaker 1: Ryan Eckert, the status quo of no salary cap was
Speaker 1: seen as unfair because the big market teams could just
Speaker 1: outspend the small market teams and dominate the game on
Speaker 1: the field. Even with a salary cap, however, big market
Speaker 1: teams would still have an advantage, so their solution was
Speaker 1: not only a salary cap, but also revenue sharing, so
Speaker 1: that the revenues among all the teams could be distributed
Speaker 1: equally or at least shared to have a sort of
Speaker 1: redistribution of wealth. But the players themselves were dead set
Speaker 1: against a salary cap. They as free agents, wanted to
Speaker 1: command whatever salary open and free market would allow them to. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: on February seven, Michael Jordan's signed perhaps the smallest contract
Speaker 1: of his life, a minor league deal with the Chicago
Speaker 1: White Sox. He was going to pursue his dream of
Speaker 1: being a baseball player. Jordan had once been quite a
Speaker 1: promising ballplayer in Little League Roland las B. Michael was
Speaker 1: just an incredible pitcher. He would often come in and
Speaker 1: just strike out everybody he faced in that short amount
Speaker 1: of time. Jordan threw two no hitters on the way
Speaker 1: to leading his team just shy at the Little League
Speaker 1: World Series. He was also a pretty good hitter. In
Speaker 1: a crucial moment on the march to the Little League
Speaker 1: World Series down in Georgia later that summer, Michael hit
Speaker 1: a booming home run over center field in a very
Speaker 1: big park that allowed his team to tie the score.
Speaker 1: Jordan's team eventually lost that game, but that home run
Speaker 1: was huge for him personally. His father spent years bragging
Speaker 1: about it. Finally Michael had his father's attention. The next year,
Speaker 1: when Jordan was baseball did not go as well. Michael
Speaker 1: maybe played in three or four games, but he spent
Speaker 1: most time on the bench. And again, from what we
Speaker 1: know in retrospect of Michael's personality, that kind of drop off,
Speaker 1: that kind of come down, was devastating stuff. Jordan eventually
Speaker 1: quit baseball during his senior year. By then it was
Speaker 1: clear his game was basketball. But the thirty one year
Speaker 1: old Jordan arrived in Sarasota, Florida, ready to try to
Speaker 1: compete with professionals in a game he had given up
Speaker 1: on in high school. This is Jordan in an interview
Speaker 1: from that spring. These are the two dreams that I've
Speaker 1: always had when I was a kid, from baseball and basketball,
Speaker 1: and I achieved basketball so I wanted to tie my
Speaker 1: hand in baseball, and thousands of fans and hundreds of
Speaker 1: reporters to send it on Florida to see if he
Speaker 1: could do it. Many of the other players were not
Speaker 1: so enthusiastic about the newcomer. The success in baseball is
Speaker 1: hard one. It is a game of repetition. And so
Speaker 1: you have all these people with their hard one experience
Speaker 1: in baseball, and here comes Jordan's who quit in the
Speaker 1: middle of his senior season in high school. Still, Jordan
Speaker 1: brought within the same determine, nation and work ethic that
Speaker 1: made him a champion in basketball, and he he had
Speaker 1: to turn his basketball body back to a leaner baseball body,
Speaker 1: which he did. Jordan arrived at training camp early each
Speaker 1: morning and left late each night. As the White Sox
Speaker 1: hitting coach Walt Rehniac observed, quote, he's one hard working mother. Well,
Speaker 1: you get the point. At the end of the spring,
Speaker 1: the White Sox played across town exhibition game with the
Speaker 1: Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. The atmosphere in Chicago was electric.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be a capacity crowd today or close to it,
Speaker 1: and everybody who came to the ballpark today, came to
Speaker 1: see that man you're looking at right there and see
Speaker 1: if he can indeed hit some major league pitching. Marry.
Speaker 1: This is his first time in front of more than
Speaker 1: thirty five thousand fans. Jordan went two for five with
Speaker 1: two runs batted in. He received a standing ovation. You know,
Speaker 1: he just played well. He had a He had the
Speaker 1: kind of day that had Harry Carey singing his prey
Speaker 1: aces and all of Chicago will glow. It was perhaps
Speaker 1: to be the high water mark of his brief baseball career.
Speaker 1: Soon after, the White Sox assigned Jordan to their Double
Speaker 1: A minor league team, the Birmingham Barons back up and
Speaker 1: Matt just lesson for a moment. You know who's up, Birmingham, Alabama.
Speaker 1: Here he is, right fielder Michael Jeffrey Jordan. Let's lesson
Speaker 1: for a moment. Jordan went over three in his professional debut,
Speaker 1: but the fans in Birmingham loved every minute. The team
Speaker 1: started setting attendance records, selling out souvenirs. The fans would
Speaker 1: break into spontaneous chance of Jordan's gatorade anthem. I want
Speaker 1: to be like Mike Jordan's play on the field, however,
Speaker 1: did not always match the hype, but through it all
Speaker 1: he persisted. And yet here he was going from an
Speaker 1: average blow average showing in in spring training over to
Speaker 1: the humiliation of being a Birmingham baron and not being
Speaker 1: a very good one, of having to play this out
Speaker 1: in front of all these adoring fans, and really being
Speaker 1: willing to humiliate himself. Soon the media started to turn
Speaker 1: on him. Sports Illustrated, which at once lionized air Jordan's,
Speaker 1: came out with a cover that read, bagg at Michael
Speaker 1: Jordan and the White Sox are embarrassing Baseball. Jordan often
Speaker 1: kept to himself on the long bus rides across the
Speaker 1: South and in Birmingham. He had a rented house in Birmingham.
Speaker 1: But Jordan would sit up there on the deck alone
Speaker 1: and I looking up at the stars, thinking about his father.
Speaker 1: And this was really about his father, about mourning him,
Speaker 1: about reconnecting with him, about finding what they never found
Speaker 1: in baseball. Meanwhile, back in the major leagues, the owners
Speaker 1: and players were having their own existential crisis. In June,
Speaker 1: the owners unveiled their proposal for a new collective bargaining agreement,
Speaker 1: one that included a salary cap. Ryan Eckert, the small
Speaker 1: market owners, we're really pushing hard for a strike and
Speaker 1: pushing hard for a salary cap. But it wasn't just
Speaker 1: small market owners. They were also at the time a
Speaker 1: lot of new owners in the league who had their
Speaker 1: own firm views about labor disputes. A lot of them
Speaker 1: had bought into these teams in recent times, and we're
Speaker 1: coming from the business world and had experience in negotiating
Speaker 1: against and like busting up labor unions. The owner of
Speaker 1: the Royals was the CEO of Walmart. The owner of
Speaker 1: the Giants was the owner of Safely A grocery stores
Speaker 1: who famously lay it off, you know, thousands of employees
Speaker 1: to prevent them from unionizing. So a lot of these
Speaker 1: owners had been successful in negotiating against unions outside of baseball,
Speaker 1: but those heavy handed tactics just didn't work out quite
Speaker 1: the same against baseball players as they did with you know,
Speaker 1: like unskilled Walmart workers. Four days after the owners released
Speaker 1: their proposal, the head of the players Association, Donald Fear,
Speaker 1: announced the union's rejection of the proposal. In August, when
Speaker 1: negotiations going nowhere, the owners withheld a scheduled payment for
Speaker 1: the player's pension fund. It was an act of war.
Speaker 1: The owners might have had most of the power then
Speaker 1: controlled the purse strings, but the players had one mighty
Speaker 1: piece of leverage, a strike that could cancel the season
Speaker 1: and the postseason. Dandy Alderson and this is a quote
Speaker 1: that I love, was the GM of Oakland at the time,
Speaker 1: and he compared the strike lead up to the strike
Speaker 1: two the number one movie of the summer at the time,
Speaker 1: which is Speed, right and um, the playoffs in the
Speaker 1: World Series are the hostages. The players are driving the
Speaker 1: bus and the owners of the cops chasing them, trying
Speaker 1: to stop it. In the end, they couldn't stop the bus.
Speaker 1: On August twelve, the Major League Baseball Players Association directed
Speaker 1: its members to go on strike. Then a month later
Speaker 1: and the other shoe has finally dropped in the ongoing
Speaker 1: baseball wars. The acting Commissioner, Bud Sea Leake, the owner
Speaker 1: of the Milwaukee Brewers, has just made it official the
Speaker 1: remainder of the regular season and the entire postseason, playoffs
Speaker 1: and World Series have officially been canceled. This one of
Speaker 1: the great casualties of the strike was that the season
Speaker 1: was setting up to be a historic one. Tony Gwynn
Speaker 1: was in the middle of attempting to hit four hundred
Speaker 1: for the first time since Ted Williams did in one
Speaker 1: Now Tony Gwynn was getting when the strikes started eighteen
Speaker 1: games left, playing against the Hardinals, Cubs, and Marlins and Rockies,
Speaker 1: all of whom had really mediocre pitching staff. Gwinn wasn't
Speaker 1: alone in chasing history. Matt Williams had forty three home
Speaker 1: runs when the strikes started and was on pace exactly.
Speaker 1: They hit sixty one home runs by the end of
Speaker 1: the season to tie Roger Morris. Baseball fans didn't care
Speaker 1: whose fault it was. They didn't take kindly to strike.
Speaker 1: I mean, the fan reaction was overwhelmingly negative and fans
Speaker 1: were heartbroken. They were crushed disappointed. The World Series was
Speaker 1: canceled for the first time since nineteen o four, and
Speaker 1: uh it was very sad, and when baseball eventually did
Speaker 1: come back, a lot of fans were still traumatized and
Speaker 1: very reluctant to go back to the game. They really
Speaker 1: held a grudge. At the same time, his major league
Speaker 1: colleagues were refusing to take the field, Jordan was getting
Speaker 1: better at it, slowly improving his game. He finished his
Speaker 1: first minor league season with a two oh two average
Speaker 1: with thirty stolen races and fifty one r b i s.
Speaker 1: It was good enough to keep playing Roland Lasonby. He
Speaker 1: later after Birmingham, he went to the Arizona Fall League,
Speaker 1: which was another victory. I think he hit two sixty
Speaker 1: in the Fall League. Michael Jordan was getting better at baseball.
Speaker 1: All of his hard work was starting to pay off.
Speaker 1: At the start of Jordan was not returning to basketball.
Speaker 1: He was getting ready for his second, hopefully better season
Speaker 1: in professional baseball. Then fate and a still ongoing baseball
Speaker 1: strike intervened. When spring training started, the owners attempted to
Speaker 1: bring in replacement players Ryan Eckert again, and they were
Speaker 1: bringing Washta veterans. They're bringing guys out of pizzerias and
Speaker 1: all kinds of all kinds of guys and also minor
Speaker 1: league is There's a lot of pressure on minor league
Speaker 1: players to go in and show up to spring training
Speaker 1: and ultimately play in replacing games. And one of those
Speaker 1: minor leaguers was perhaps the greatest basketball player that ever lived,
Speaker 1: Roland Leason By. The White Sox were eager to deploy
Speaker 1: him in various capacities, and he really didn't want anything
Speaker 1: to do with being any kind of scab or doing
Speaker 1: anything to undermine those players. The owners were pushing the
Speaker 1: White Sox to have Jordan play some exhibition games to
Speaker 1: retain some fan interest during the strike. Ryan Eckert, That's
Speaker 1: fact really made Jordan's choose aside, and I guess Jordan's
Speaker 1: sided with his fellow professional athletes and made it clear
Speaker 1: that he wouldn't play as a scab or as a
Speaker 1: replacement player in any subsequent Major league games. Jordan announced
Speaker 1: his retirement from baseball in March. As Chicago Bulls coach
Speaker 1: Phil Jackson later summed up the development, Jordan hadn't failed baseball,
Speaker 1: baseball failed him. Immediately, rumors began about Jordan's return to basketball,
Speaker 1: the NBA legend wavered. Then the week later, Jordans issued
Speaker 1: the shortest and perhaps most significant press release in the
Speaker 1: history of sports, a two word facts that read, quote
Speaker 1: I'm back. Those two words would prove to be worth
Speaker 1: billions of dollars. That's next. During the year and a
Speaker 1: half that Michael Jordan was playing baseball, the Chicago Bulls
Speaker 1: and the NBA both struggled NBA ticket sales were down,
Speaker 1: the Bulls lost to the Knicks in the playoffs in
Speaker 1: and we're having a rough season. But on March, when
Speaker 1: Jordan arrived in Indianapolis for the Bulls game against the
Speaker 1: Indiana Pacers, it was all forgotten. Now. I've been covering
Speaker 1: the Bulls for a while, and just to be there
Speaker 1: and to see the insanity of his return to basketball
Speaker 1: from baseball was a very powerful thing. And it's like
Speaker 1: the stock market of the American sports experience had plummeted
Speaker 1: while I was gone, But there was something else that
Speaker 1: returned to action in March professional baseball, two weeks after
Speaker 1: Jordan's departure from baseball, legal proceedings surrounding the strike were
Speaker 1: finally coming to a head. Ryan Eckert, the National Labor
Speaker 1: Relations Board met pretty quickly, voted and ruled in favor
Speaker 1: of the playoffs, and that was notably provided over by Stonia,
Speaker 1: said maaw Justice and sort of my hoar spoke out
Speaker 1: almost unilaterally in support of the players, which was a
Speaker 1: huge win for the players, huge loss of the owners.
Speaker 1: The strike ended and play resumed a month later. Jerry
Speaker 1: ryan'sdorff in other baseball owners did not get the salary
Speaker 1: cap they wanted, but at least Rhyan Storff, the NBA owner,
Speaker 1: had a pretty big concession prize one of the best
Speaker 1: basketball players to ever play the game. The Chicago Bulls
Speaker 1: ended up winning three more NBA championships for a total
Speaker 1: of six during the nineties, and everyone knew what or
Speaker 1: who was the main reason behind it. All the people
Speaker 1: around him, whether it was Ryan Store for Phil Jackson,
Speaker 1: all of these people owed him so much and it
Speaker 1: didn't stop there. We all owned Michael Jordan's when I
Speaker 1: you know, I just lived on the change that was
Speaker 1: spilled on the floor of my years covering him and
Speaker 1: writing about him. And uh, I mean all of us.
Speaker 1: I don't care if you were a photographer, a teammate,
Speaker 1: a writer, the newspapers in Chicago, the y I don't
Speaker 1: care who it was. They all everything to this phenomenon.
Speaker 1: So how much was Michael Jordan's worth to the game
Speaker 1: of basketball? You really had to be alive back then
Speaker 1: and have witnessed the phenomenon. This is Greg Leonard, an
Speaker 1: economist and a vice president Charles River Associates, an economics
Speaker 1: consulting firm. People were really interested in watching him play
Speaker 1: because he was so extraordinary and um, it really was
Speaker 1: kind of unique. In the ninety nineties, Leonard In, an
Speaker 1: m I T. Professor named Jerry Houseman, decided to look
Speaker 1: at what kind of impact a megastar athlete like Jordan
Speaker 1: had not just on his own team's finances, but on
Speaker 1: league fortunes. More generally, we did start thinking about the
Speaker 1: nature of the relationship among teams in a sports league
Speaker 1: like this, where you had a situation where the Bulls
Speaker 1: were the one is paying Michael Jordan's salary, but Jordan
Speaker 1: is so popular that he's also driving up revenues for
Speaker 1: other teams every time the Bulls come to town. So overall,
Speaker 1: we found that there was about a twenty percent increase
Speaker 1: in attendance. This was in the season due to Michael Jordan,
Speaker 1: and this translated to about two and a half million
Speaker 1: dollars for the other teams in the league. It didn't
Speaker 1: stop at just attendance all told. If you add across
Speaker 1: TV attendance and properties, um, we found a Michael Jordan
Speaker 1: effect of about fifty three million dollars for other teams.
Speaker 1: And again that's back in nine dollars. You can more
Speaker 1: or less double that. So we're talking about in today's
Speaker 1: dollars about a hundred million dollars for the other NBA teams.
Speaker 1: In Fortune magazine, building on Leonard and Houseman's work, estimated
Speaker 1: the full value of Michael Jordan beyond just the season then,
Speaker 1: including Jordan's endorsements, ticket sales, merchandizing, television revenues, and more.
Speaker 1: All told, they estimated a Jordan's effect of close to
Speaker 1: ten billion dollars. But Jordan's returned to basketball meant so
Speaker 1: much more to the league than just that. Thanks to
Speaker 1: the strike, major League Baseball owners lost close to one
Speaker 1: billion dollars and the players more than three million. Then
Speaker 1: baseball attendance plummeted my more than the following year. Ryan Eckert,
Speaker 1: I think with the perspective of time and knowing what
Speaker 1: the effects were, both sides surely would have been able
Speaker 1: to find a compromise. But I think they're a little
Speaker 1: bit naive about how bad it would be. And worse
Speaker 1: than the money problem, major League Baseball had an image problem.
Speaker 1: When baseball came back, fans didn't rushed back the Ballpard
Speaker 1: is happy that the game was finally back to that
Speaker 1: they keep going, and they were very slow to come down. Um,
Speaker 1: those are very lane years of baseball. But thanks to
Speaker 1: the explosion and home runs that started in the late nineties,
Speaker 1: baseball started to bounce back. Of course, it turned out
Speaker 1: that steroids and other performance enhancing drugs played a big
Speaker 1: part in that bounce. All sides, players, owners, and commissioner
Speaker 1: willingly turned a blind eye to what was happening in
Speaker 1: terms of the integrity of the game. And we're just
Speaker 1: grateful that baseball was back in the public eye until
Speaker 1: consequently what you have is the steroid era being allowed
Speaker 1: to take root, which obviously going forward, led to disastrous
Speaker 1: consequences for baseball, which we still feel the effects of today.
Speaker 1: And Eckert says, baseball was never quite the same. I
Speaker 1: think strike really changed forever the way the game is
Speaker 1: seen in the largest fabric of American culture and society.
Speaker 1: You know, the national pastime, as the phrase is used.
Speaker 1: But I'm not sure that talking to you now in
Speaker 1: baseball is the national past time anymore. As a kid,
Speaker 1: a day at the ballpark was almost an experience out
Speaker 1: of time, right. It's the same game that my father's
Speaker 1: son and the sixties. You know, my grandfather saw in
Speaker 1: the forties and I as a kid was experiencing in
Speaker 1: the nineties, and you know, time stands still, right, So
Speaker 1: go to a baseball game now is just not the
Speaker 1: same experience that I had as a kid. It's just different.
Speaker 1: That disillusionment that's followed the strike really was the final
Speaker 1: chapter we've seen now what Michael Jordan meant to the
Speaker 1: game of basketball and how baseball has struggled to regain
Speaker 1: its prominence after strike. But just how critical was Michael
Speaker 1: Jordan's decision to return to basketball. Greg Leonard again has
Speaker 1: come back in nineteen was obviously hugely significant and you
Speaker 1: can really just see that, I think, without too much
Speaker 1: sophisticated analysis, by looking at what happened to the TV ratings.
Speaker 1: Jordan's first game back against the Indiana Pacers got the
Speaker 1: highest rating for a regular season NBA game in twenty years.
Speaker 1: It didn't stop there, you know, when Michael Jordan came
Speaker 1: back in terms of like the NBA Finals, um, you
Speaker 1: got about a fifty increase in in viewership in the
Speaker 1: years where Michael Jordan and the Bulls were playing in
Speaker 1: the finals versus the years where they weren't playing. Magic
Speaker 1: Johnson and Larry Bird had really helped take the NBA
Speaker 1: to a new level of popularity during the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: but it was Jordan who truly elevated the game and
Speaker 1: its finances. Roland las and By we know today that
Speaker 1: the great inflation of basketball franchises it was really due
Speaker 1: to the acceleration that Michael Jordan provided in that regard
Speaker 1: and nearly stopped providing all of that crater. When Jordan
Speaker 1: left and went to baseball, they they had no compelling figures.
Speaker 1: But since Jordan returned, basketball has gone from a somewhat
Speaker 1: local market sport to a global, high tech multimedia enterprise.
Speaker 1: The NBA has expanded, as Jerry West told me, he
Speaker 1: saw it coming. He told me in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: You know, it's becoming a licensed print money. It has
Speaker 1: become just a huge cash machine. We don't know where
Speaker 1: that goes from here. But Michael's return was the shortcut.
Speaker 1: It's possible the NBA could have built all of that
Speaker 1: and regenerated all that excitement, but Michael coming back. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was all over the world and suddenly everything had changed.
Speaker 1: You know, that's very interesting, Ryan Eckert, what if, you know,
Speaker 1: the strike didn't happen. What if Jordan's baseball career was
Speaker 1: really allowed to you know flourish. You know what, if
Speaker 1: he was convinced that that's something he really wanted to pursue,
Speaker 1: rather than just sort of seeing it as like you know,
Speaker 1: passing obsession, that he was able to give up. Broad
Speaker 1: said the quickly. You know, I'm not sure, but I
Speaker 1: think either way it's set up the NBA for continued success.
Speaker 1: And you know, it was really a fork in the
Speaker 1: road as far as the relationship between baseball, basketball and
Speaker 1: their position in American culture. Flashback is written and hosted
Speaker 1: by me Sean Braswell, senior writer and executive producer at Aussie.
Speaker 1: It was produced by Robert Coulos, Tracy Moran, Yorio Di Giza,
Speaker 1: and Shannon Williamson. Chris Hoff engineered our show special thanks
Speaker 1: to the crew at i Heeart Radio podcast Networks, especially
Speaker 1: Sophie Lichtman and Jack O'Brien. Make sure to subscribe to
Speaker 1: Flashback on the I Heart Radio app or listen wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. Flashback is the latest podcast from Azzi,
Speaker 1: a modern media company producing original TV series, festivals, news
Speaker 1: and podcasts for curious people. Azzie unique storytelling focuses on
Speaker 1: the new and the next, whether that's forward looking news
Speaker 1: and features, bold new perspectives on TV, or brand new
Speaker 1: ways of looking at history. We live in the age
Speaker 1: when ridiculous things survive. This is Roland lason By again.
Speaker 1: I asked him about the urban legend that Jordan retired
Speaker 1: from basketball because he was about to be banned from
Speaker 1: the game for gambling. Lazenby says, the theory doesn't hold
Speaker 1: up under closer scrutiny. All the old NBA players road
Speaker 1: around on trains. They gambled like fools on trains before
Speaker 1: they gambled on planes. It's a It was, is and
Speaker 1: remains a gambling culture, whether it's talk or betting on
Speaker 1: any kind of little detail involved in their life, you know,
Speaker 1: half court shot or whatever. Those guys have bet like crazy.
Speaker 1: And Michael he was the king of the NBA, so
Speaker 1: we was certainly the king of that kind of petting.
Speaker 1: And Jordan's bet on a lot of things, especially his
Speaker 1: own golf games, but it didn't cross the line. No
Speaker 1: one has ever come up with a scenario, with any
Speaker 1: kind of idea, with any kind of allegation that he
Speaker 1: for a minute ever bet on an NBA game to
Speaker 1: dive deeper on this and more, head to Aussie dot
Speaker 1: com slash flashback. That's oz y dot com slash Flashback.
Speaker 1: There you can find my lecture notes from today's episode
Speaker 1: featuring extended interviews, links to further reading and more information
Speaker 1: on the changing fortunes at baseball and back bsketball, as
Speaker 1: well as links to other stories from history uncovered by
Speaker 1: me and other reporters at Aussie. Please be sure to
Speaker 1: support Flashback by rating and leaving a review for us
Speaker 1: right here in your podcast app, and remember to answer
Speaker 1: this question about next week's episode for a chance to
Speaker 1: win a shout out. What chronic physical ailment did Adolph
Speaker 1: Hitler suffer from that led him to seek some rather
Speaker 1: unorthodox and highly consequential medical treatment. Take your best guests
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