As many of you know I am huge sports fan on the side and occasionally write on a few different sports blogs around the interwebs. Basketball has always been one of my favorite sports but by far my passion has always been baseball. ESPN, or as we call it The Network, is celebrating their 30th anniversary with a documentary series entitled 30 for 30. This week they finally returned to covering stories that are relevant to my sports love. They covered Michael Jordan's transition from basketball to minor league baseball. They looked at how Michael responded to the murder of his father and the transition from jumbo jets to riding the charter bus with a minor league baseball team. I saw the promo for this episode of 30 for 30 and immediately set the DVR to record.
Watching the first 20 minutes of this I seriously found myself a little upset with Jordan for making this attempt. By the way I am typing this as I watch the show so if my opinion changes dramatically don't jump on me. I have no clue what to expect. But anyways, I found myself very upset with Jordan. Some people try their entire lives just to make a name for themselves in baseball, a name that may make a kid get excited to get their baseball card. Jordan tried to show up and get that without any outside struggles or hardships. It looked like a huge publicity stunt by the White Sox and a major stretch for Jordan himself. Now I realize he says that his family issued the challenge to him to become a baseball player and I respect that but this whole circus they keep showing in this video is pretty insane.
The camerawork and editing in this documentary are very impressive, but the story so far is NOTHING new that hasn't been talked about. They were hyping this thing up to be the "insider" into Jordan's real days in Baseball. Not so much, ESPN hits on his father's murder, then his gambling problem, and then the relationship between the gambling and his father's murder. ALL things that have been talked about for years. Please give me something in depth here.
The second half of the documentary is more centered on the baseball 'career' of Jordan. I do like the mix of interview and authentic footage from back in the day but was it necessary to do interview the old real estate lady that got him his house in Birmingham? She makes people in that town look like country idiots. I will say that the interviews of his former teammates was very cool hearing about how they never made the majors but they felt like big leaguers when he was around.
My overall impression of this documentary was somewhat positive. I expected ALOT more from this but I definitely enjoyed it for the most part. For someone who has always played baseball and watched it, this was automatically interesting. Jordan's baseball career was insanely short but he did chase a dream/request of his murdered father. I applaud that dedication to his father but I also see it as somewhat of a media stunt just to keep his name in lights for a year or two until his big comeback in the NBA. Thats where Jordan belonged. In the NBA, dunking on people... not on a bus or wearing baseball pants. This may not be the usual Media Hero post but this is definitely a big entertainment event I looked forward to, if you don't wanna read this... not gonna hurt my feelings.
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