It's the best of times, it's the worst of times. As I record this, both the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball are sidelined because of the coronavirus, but the two professional sports leagues are hardly in the same position. On the one hand, you've got basketball. NBA salaries have skyrocketed in the past five years. The average player makes above seven million dollars per season, which makes the NBA
the highest paid sports league in the world. And basketball is also now the most popular sport in the largest country in the world at one point, for a billion basketball crazed people in a country and economy that's growing. It's unbelievable passion that people have for the sport and for the NBA in China. And on the other hand, you've got baseball. People just don't seem to be as interested in the sport as they used to be. Last
year's World Series was the least watched in history. So is this a wake up call for Major League Baseball? Kind of? The World Series continue to compete effectively last year. According to Forbes magazine, for the first time ever, the average value of an NBA team is worth more than the average value of a Major League baseball team. There are lots of reasons for this reversal of fortune, from marketing to a lack of star power to the mastery
of social media. But if you had to pick one fateful moment when everything changed when baseball and basketball started to go in different directions, will might well be something that happened twenty five springs ago. That's the moment when one of baseball's worst players decided to give up on his dream rather than to be a scab during the game's worst labor strike. Minor league ball players have to give up on their dreams all the time, but this
minor league ball player was not your ordinary athlete. He was also the greatest brand ambassador that the sport of basketball has ever known, and baseball's loss proved to be basketball's destiny making game. How Sean Braswell today on Flashback, a tale of one windy city and one remarkable player whose fateful decision helped alter the fate of two sports.
And a very special thanks to our guest today who joined us via phone or provided their own local recordings during the global health crisis in the shelter in place order. Let's go back in time twenty nine years for a moment. It's June. If you've watched The Last Dance, ESPN's documentary film on Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, then you've probably already seen this footage. The celebration house begun and the Chicago locker roll and they are celebrating your Chicago.
How's the Bulls? The Lakers far? Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls won their first NBA championship. Five months later, just north of Chica Ago in Minneapolis, the Minnesota Twins won their second World Series Baseball championship in dramatic fashion, The Twins are gonna win the Sis the Twins, and
it's a it's a one nothing. Game seven of that World Series between the Twins and the Atlanta Braves was watched by fifty million viewers, double the number that watched Game seven of last year's World Series, and thirty million more than watched Michael Jordan's and the Bulls beat the Lakers that year. So Jordan's first championship might have made for a good story, but it was baseball that truly
had America's attention. But behind the scenes, trouble was brewing in baseball fay Vincent, the Yale educated lawyer and the former head of Columbia Pictures, was an unusual choice to be the commissi Nerve Baseball. He was short, balding, and were large oversized classes. He looked like he should be the league's accountant, and in his first year's commissioner in nine, Vincent was tested as few commissioners have ever been. For the first time in twenty seven years, a World Series
game will be played in Candle Stick Parked. The Battle of the Bay continues Game three of the nineteen eighty nine A World Series, the Oakland Athletics against the San Francisco Giants. I'm al Michael's less than two minutes later this happening. He fails to get Dave Parker at second phase. So the Oakland a's take take. I'll tell you what happened. A six point nine magnitude earthquake hit the Bay Area right before Game three of the World Series in October nine,
and I'm not all right. That's what we are. That's the greatest open in the history of television. The following day, fay Vincent addressed reporters amid the tragedy We've made the decision not to play tonight. That's the only decision we made. It's a difficult time for San Francisco and indeed for the whole Bay area. Um, the great tragedy is that could coincides with our modest little sporting event here. Vincent handled the disaster beautifully. He was reasonable, cautious, humble smart.
The following season in Vincent was again tested when baseball owners started a lockout during spring training in an effort to limit rising player salaries. This is Ryan Eckert, historian at Monmouth University and author of A Game of Failure Major League Baseball strike The idea of a salary cap uh started to end to the conversation, and Vincent supported the players and being completely against the salary cap, and so very quickly he really did not ingratiate himselves to
his employers, that his bosses his employers. You see, in Major League Baseball, the commissioner is handpicked by a very select hiring committee, the owners. They thought that Stave Vincent would kind of be on their side, having selected him themselves the owners, and when Vincent came in, he really acted much more in the best interests of baseball than in the interests of his employers, really, who were no
one but the owners. The owners can't actually fire Vincent, but they started to put enormous pressure on him to resign. After months of controversy and speculation, baseball commissioner with faith, Vincent has bowed to management wishes that he resigned. Although the owners have not announced their plans for reorganization, it seems likely that baseball may never be the same Charlie Rose was. Right after Vincent's resignation in the owners made
a more naked power grab. They installed one of their own, Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig as acting commissioner in but the owners were only getting warmed up. One of the men behind Favencin's departure was one of Bud Sealik's best friends and a fellow owner, Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Ryan Storff. And if you recognize that name, it's probably because Ryan Storff is also the owner of the Chicago
Bulls had a salary caps in four. Ryan Storff wanted to apply this name principal to baseball because that was working out really pretty well for hand the owners of as the owner of the ball thanks to the salary cap in basketball, Ryan Storff paid Michael Jordan's, an all time great player at the peak of his powers, less than he paid White Sox outfielder George Bell in baseball.
So at the same time Ryan Storff was helping Leeda Coup to get a salary cap in baseball, he was getting a bargain on the best player in basketball, a star who would in three deliver the Bulls their third championship in three years. The Bulls three p was an amazing accomplishment for Jordan's but he was starting to show signs of wear and tear from the immense pressure. This is Roland Lason by, a basketball writer and author of
Michael Jordan's The Life. The process of winning a three pet was absolutely completely, thoroughly exhausting, mentally, emotionally physical in every way, and by the summer of Michael Jordan was starting to contemplate a career change. You know, his father had long hope that Michael might consider switching over and playing some baseball. Just change up things. His father would
tell him, you know, you've accomplished everything you can in basketball. Also, there was a lot up in the air, and then something happened that summer that would turn Michael Jordan's world upside down, and that would put Chicago owner Jerry Ryansdorff in the bizarre position of watching his most valuable basketball asset turned into one of his lowest performing baseball ones. Do you have an interesting tale about unintended consequences from history or your own life, Please share it with us
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