BRADENTON, Fla. — That’s odd, Mike Lum thought. Somebody was hitting off a tee in the batting cage after a night game.
Lum was the minor-league hitting coordinator for the Chicago White Sox at the time, the summer of 1994. He happened to be visiting the Class AA Birmingham Barons and was in manager Terry Francona’s office when he heard the “thwack-thwack-thwack” of bat meeting ball.
He went outside to see who it was.
He didn’t need to ask for a name.
“It was Michael Jordan,” Lum recalled from LECOM Park on Tuesday. “He was doing extra work for himself.