Joel Sherman

Joel Sherman

MLB

MLB should use two-sport star power to its advantage

Twenty years ago this month, Michael Jordan signed a minor league contract with the White Sox. Which was shocking. But not quite as shocking as the reaction of the baseball community.

In general, the sport took a “who the hell is he” pose. How dare a 31-year-old use his fame and power to essentially gain a roster spot at the expense of someone else? I remember many executives and scouts infuriated at what they viewed as Michael Jordan’s personal fantasy camp.

Then and now, I believed that a shortsighted, dumb reaction. The sport had an opportunity and did not seize upon it. Here was the most popular athlete on the planet — at the height of his ability and celebrity — saying that he has such passion for your game that he wanted to abandon his sport and play yours (yes, I know about the gambling conspiracy theories).

This was a moment to embrace Jordan, especially since the game more and more was losing inner-city cred, being marginalized as a slow-moving affair unable to captivate young attention spans. Jordan came and went, leaving after a poor Double-A season — another opportunity missed to brag that the player voted the greatest athlete of the 20th century by ESPN did not have the specialized skills necessary to play baseball.

In the two decades since, there has been a dichotomy — on one hand the sport is more popular than ever with high attendance, record cable TV deals and ever-rising franchise values. On the other hand, the sport potentially has hurt its long-term health by not scoring with those inner-city kids to become players and fans. As one barometer showed, just 8.5 percent of major league players last year were African-American, down from 19.0 percent in 1981 and 17.2 percent in Jordan’s 1994 baseball fling (all stats are from baseball researcher Mark Amour).

Scouts who transverse this country bemoan the lack of available high-end athletes, citing a lost generation of not just African-Americans, but also poor whites. The word that comes up often is “soft,” that the minors are too populated by players with a country-club ethos — players whose parents had the resources for one-on-one instruction and traveling squads and who often haven’t experienced hard-scrabble failure and thus melt once they do.

There are many reasons cited, including the costs of those summer traveling teams and that the NCAA allows just 11.7 scholarships per school — meaning few players get full scholarships. As MLB Chief Operating Officer Rob Manfred said, “Coach K comes and offers a full ride to play basketball at Duke and Wake Forest comes with a 33 percent scholarship to play baseball, well, it is just a huge competitive disadvantage.”

Last year, commissioner Bud Selig assembled a 19-person diversity task force that includes — among other things — owners, GMs and union head Tony Clark. In July, MLB is expanding its Breakthrough Series — a showcase for high school players made up largely of African-Americans — to 200 candidates in four regions of the country. Manfred spoke of trying to synthesize several initiatives, such as the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) and Urban Youth Academies, “under one umbrella” out of the MLB offices to better funnel attention, direction and funds. It is possible that MLB will try to fund more college scholarships, but that is a complicated issue in not interfering with players’ amateur status and in determining how to best spread the wealth to 200-ish Division I schools.

All of these are long-term initiatives and are worthwhile. But in the here and now, MLB has been given a gift. On a large scale, more and more information is being learned about brain trauma, particularly among those who play football, so there is potential for top athletes to want to avoid the risk and gravitate elsewhere.

Then there is this Jordan-esque opportunity: At this moment the quarterbacks for both the national college champions and Super Bowl champions are showing their affinity for baseball at the same time that one of the greatest basketball players ever is trying to become a pro pitcher.

Heisman winner Jameis Winston, who closes for Florida State, called it a thrill to play last week against the Yankees and said he would like to play both football and baseball professionally. Russell Wilson was selected in the Rule Five draft in December by Texas (though he hasn’t played in the minors since 2011) and will be in Rangers camp on Monday in uniform because the organization figured: Why not put a motivated, over-achieving, character guy in the midst of its players?

Plus, Tracy McGrady is working out as a pitcher with the independent Sugar Land Skeeters with an eye on fulfilling a lifelong dream of playing professional baseball — and, yes, he would like to make it all the way to the majors.

This cannot be Jordan Redux. MLB should be embracing the fact three African-American high achievers in sports more popular with youth nevertheless love baseball.

“You start to get the pieces to create a moment in time,” Manfred said.

To that end, I believe an MLB team should sign McGrady to a minor league contract. Not because he is a prospect. Heck, he turns 35 in May, and serious knee and back ailments kept a great basketball career from being even more. Though, as an aside, he reportedly is throwing in the high-80s, and his one-time Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy did tell me this week, “Tracy is a once-in-a-lifetime gifted athlete. … Few will think he is going to make it, but I can guarantee you that McGrady does.”

So an MLB team would get, in Van Gundy’s words, “a truly motivated guy who is not putting on a stunt. He wants to do this.” More importantly, though, would be having an organization’s lifeblood — its youngest, most impressionable players — associate with, again in Van Gundy’s words, “a good person,” while also sending out a positive vibe to a community that MLB is trying harder to reach.

“He could give any young player an overwhelming number of experiences,” Van Gundy vouched. “He came straight to the NBA from high school, so he knows what it is to be away from home at that age. He played under pressure at home in Orlando. He dealt with injury in Houston. He knows different markets. He aged gracefully. And he is a very honest and forthcoming guy. He wouldn’t paint that he did everything perfectly, but his self-awareness is good. I think he would correct anything wrong he saw in the right tone of voice. I think he would be great. I think he would share if he had a do-over what he would do over.”

And McGrady does see this as a mission. Yes, the Skeeters give him an opportunity to chase a dream — he said he always considered himself a baseball player — five miles from where he lives. But when I asked by phone if he would go to extended spring or a small minor league town, he said, “Absolutely. This is a big reason why I considered coming back to play baseball. I do think we do not have enough African-Americans playing the sport. I want to be that figure who gives back to kids. I want them to know this is a fun and cool sport. … It is fun and cool and you can play it for 20-plus years.”

Twenty years after Jordan’s foray, MLB is getting another chance to embrace cool and get all the fringe benefits. Don’t blow it this time.