In the autumn of 1993, Michael Jordan - often regarded as the greatest player to shoot a basketball - shocked the sports world by announcing he was retiring from the NBA.
Then he stunned fans again by deciding to pursue his long-held dream of playing professional baseball.
Within months, the then 31-year-old, high-flying forward known as "His Airness" was bobbling easy flies and swatting at bad pitches as a struggling right fielder for the minor-league Birmingham Barons.
This surreal fillip in sports history, which ended up bisecting Jordan's phenomenally successful NBA career, forms the basis of director Ron Shelton's documentary Jordan Rides the Bus.
"Only Jordan would `get away' by playing another professional sport," Shelton, best-known as the director of sports-themed films such as Bull Durham and White Men Can't Jump, said.
Shelton said he'd nearly forgotten about the baseball footnote to Jordan's career until a colleague suggested it could be the basis of a film for 30 for 30, ESPN's ongoing documentary series celebrating the network's 30th anniversary.
"For me, it was like, `That really happened, didn't it?'," Shelton recalled.
At the time, Jordan's decision was as shocking as the Tiger Woods saga has been to contemporary fans.
Jordan's already legendary athletic prowess was at a peak.
His Chicago Bulls had racked up three straight NBA championships and during the 1993 finals he scored 40 or more points in four consecutive games.
Jordan complained he'd lost his desire to play the game, but fans and commentators offered their own conjectures for the star's mystifying exit, including that his worldwide celebrity was making it difficult to cover up his huge gambling losses.
In the course of researching his documentary, Shelton said he investigated the supposed gambling-retirement link and decided it was bogus.
"I confirmed absolutely in my mind that his leaving basketball had nothing to do with his gambling issues," he said.
Instead, Shelton's film depicts a superstar shattered by the murder of his father in a bizarre roadside robbery the previous summer.
"It was a real interesting father-son relationship," Shelton said.
"They kind of partied together.
"His father would travel with him, go to casinos with him, play golf with him.
"They were almost like brothers."
An avid baseball fan, James R. Jordan senior had long dreamed of his son entering the major leagues, and his death apparently triggered a nostalgic quest for Michael.
But Jordan wasn't destined for the All-Star roster, even with Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf offering him a spot on the Chicago White Sox farm team.
At spring training in 1994, Jordan proved such an awkward hitter and fielder that Sports Illustrated ran a cover story titled "Bag It, Michael."
He practised ferociously in the batting cage, however, and his dedication and charm won over many sceptics, including team-mates who had previously resented him as a celebrity interloper.
"I take the position he actually was a pretty good ballplayer and made staggering progress," Shelton said.
Finding sources who would talk about what happened, however, proved harder than Shelton expected.
Jordan declined to be interviewed, as did former team-mates Scottie Pippen and B. J. Armstrong.
Nor was there much material available on Jordan's father.
But Phil Jackson, then the coach of the Bulls (and now of the Los Angeles Lakers), sat down for an interview.
And Shelton lavishes attention on ordinary Birmingham residents - including a real estate agent and a bus driver - whose lives changed with a superstar athlete in their midst.
"For most of us, it was just this hole in the NBA, but in Birmingham, God had arrived," Shelton said.
"From their perspective, it was the greatest thing that ever happened."
- Jordan Rides the Bus screens on Thursday at 10pm on ESPN (digital 34).
