If you were alive in Birmingham in 1994 there were few bigger, or more exciting, local stories than Chicago Bulls basketball great Michael Jordan having joined the Birmingham Barons for a season to see if he had what it took to chase a childhood dream and eventually make it into the big leagues and play for the Chicago White Sox. Especially if you were kid. And there were few greater acknowledgments of what a great story it was than when Warner Bros. decided to include the Barons’ hometown field at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium in one of the opening sequences of their groundbreaking animated live-action sports comedy Space Jam just two years later in 1996. Starring Jordan and Bugs Bunny— and featuring a veritable phalanx of basketball and cartoon greats like Charles Barkley, Daffy Duck, Larry Bird, Porky Pig, Patrick Ewing, and Foghorn Leghorn (to name just a few)— the film’s plot revolved around Jordan’s real life transition from basketball star to aspiring baseball star, and the attendant and annoying fandom that came with it, before being whisked away to an alternative universe of Looney Tunes, Nerdlucks, and Monstars to battle in basketball once again for the sake of both cartoons and humanity. A highly entertaining and fun-filled movie, although it didn’t garner many awards on its own merits, its theme song (R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly”) did, including a Grammy for “Best Song Written Specifically for Motion Picture or for Television” in 1997. Prominently featuring the Barons alongside Seinfeld’s Newman, playing an overly-attentive and bumbling local handler for Jordan, the film would briefly elevate the team and its uniform to national status, inspiring legions of local fans to take even more pride in the fleeting moment Jordan was briefly one of our own.
FUN FACT: Space Jam was one of the very first films to be shot almost exclusively using CGI in a virtual studio with green screens, motion trackers and stand-in actors for the cartoon characters following the pioneering work of other movies like Who Framed Roger Rabbit. An incredible feat of modern technology and moviemaking at the time, it would set the bar for many films to come in terms of its use of computer-generated graphics, while also remaining a childhood favorite for Jordan and Looney Tunes fans alike.
Trailer Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v98aXG562h4