Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 14, 1994 TAG: 9401140254
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Michael Jordan isn't kidding. He has been working out at Comiskey Park this winter - and not just to stay in shape or fight boredom.
Jordan, 30, craving a new challenge after retiring from the NBA's Chicago Bulls, thinks he's found one. He wants to play baseball for the Chicago White Sox.
He insists this is no mid-life crisis or fantasy. He even has offered to pay his own way to spring training.
"I want to go to spring training for one reason and that's to make the team," Jordan was quoted as saying in Thursday's editions of the Chicago Tribune. "This is no fantasy. I plan to be in Sarasota [Fla.] by mid-February. If the White Sox were to tell me that they didn't think I was good enough to make the team and that they don't want me at spring training, then I would accept their wishes and not go."
White Sox general manager Ron Schueler said the likelihood of Jordan making the team this season "is at best a long shot." He said a decision will be made in February on whether to offer Jordan the invitation to spring training. White Sox pitchers and catchers report Feb. 16 and position players are due Feb. 21.
The Wichita Wranglers have a message for Jordan: If that White Sox thing doesn't work out, he's got a home with the minor-league team there. The Wranglers, Double-A Texas League affiliate of the San Diego Padres, offered Jordan a starting job in center field.
\ The Miracle Mets of 1969 are teaming up again to cash in on the championship they won 25 years ago. It was announced Thursday in New York that the team that went from ninth place to World Series winner in one year has formed Miracle of 1969 Enterprises Inc. The corporation will license lines of Mets memorabilia and stage commemorative events throughout the year, said Art Shamsky, the one-time lefthand-hitting outfielder who is president of the undertaking. In all, 31 players and coaches of the 1969 team will share in whatever profits are turned.
\ China's Wang Junxia, who set world records for the women's 3,000 meters and 10,000 meters last year, is the winner of the 1994 Jesse Owens International Trophy Award. Wang, the first Asian to win the award in its 14-year history, received 134 points in balloting by a worldwide panel of selectors.
American Gail Devers, winner of world titles in the women's 100-meter dash and 100-meter hurdles in 1993, finished second with 106 points. Algerian Noureddine Morceli, who broke the 8-year-old world record in the men's mile, was third with 96 points.
by CNB