Yeah you’re always supposed to run over during the play. He actually had me line up like 50 feet behind 1B on the right field line.
No, if I recall this was in like '98 or so, which would make me 12. Nobody is saying MJ had a good shot to make the show. Just better than you.
An honorable mention has to go to Jim Brown. On top of being one of the all-time greats at football, he’s in the lacrosse Hall of Fame and was an All-American. He was the second leading scorer on the Syracuse basketball team as a sophomore, lettered on track, and finished fifth in the nationals in the decathalon.
I was using hyperbole saying we both had 0.0 chance of making it to the MLB, and stated that earlier after being called out on it as my hyperbole getting away from me. I wasn’t saying I was better than him, I was saying we both had 0.0 shot…lol.
This is a pretty common right wing “gotcha” for the murder of minorities. You can tell the real free thinkers when they spew out such a ridiculous retort.
Terry Francona who was his manager said it was possible. Maybe he was just being nice, but putting it at zero isn’t correct. Jordan was not bad at AA for a guy who hadn’t played in a decade, he had an obviously elite work ethic, and he got better as the season went on.
He had no business being close to deserving of playing AA. But he was. Don’t know how you can put his chances at zero.
Basically, a guy who hit over .200 with an above league average walk rate at AA in his first year of professional baseball is just never drawing dead.
Yeah there is simply not enough credit given to
How gifted the greatest athletes are and how far that talent and drive would get them in other sports. Baseball is a slight oddity given how specialized hitting a ball is but body/ eye coordination is going to be off the charts for any Uber elite athlete.
I think it is silly to think that GOAT caliber athletes are just equivalent to random people off the street when it comes to trying other sports.
Besides the physical gifts, the mental tools are ofc the charts. The concentration, the internal motivation, the competitiveness, even really good athletes view someone like Jordan with awe when it comes to that stuff.
Someone already covered his problem with hitting curve balls. He probably could have solved that with enough time. Would he have ever been a hall of famer or all star? Probably not but could he have made the majors with enough experience at the right age? Almost certainly.
Eh. He’d be an oddity for baseball. He wasn’t especially tall for a basketball player, but he was built for basketball. Has anyone ever crossed over basketball and baseball or football at a professional level? If so, I bet it was a 6’2" or less point guard.
Yeah, I remember that. I looked up a site on two sport athletes and they didn’t list Ainge.
And yeah, Deion Sanders was good at both sports. No Bo in either, but definitely good.
MJ just isn’t the like 6’ to 6’3" or so and 190lb to 235lb or so that most of the fastest strongest people are who end up great at football, baseball, heavy weight champs and a lot of other sports.
Agreed that MJ could’ve made it to the show if he was given enough reps. He did okay for picking it up as a side gig to get his mind off the fact his dad (best friend) was brutally murdered.
Random fact: My cousin was a first round pick in the MLB draft this year.
I think there are quite a few examples of guys who played both at the D1 level, then one at the professional level. Most I can think of were like QB/PG.
There are probably a handful of guys that could have gone pro in the NFL as a TE or in the NBA as a small forward.
Then there’s the crossover that doesn’t get talked about a ton, but I’m pretty sure Tony Romo played a PGA Tour event - but it was on a sponsor exemption and he came in dead last. That said, he shot 77-82, which is respectable for someone who’s not on tour playing a tour level event. If he went into golf instead of football when he was like 20 or 25, he probably could have been a middling PGA Tour level player.
