The passage of time accomplishes plenty — but not all.
Seven years after writing the 1994 story topped by a cover headline that so incensed Michael Jordan that Jordan never spoke to Sports Illustrated again, Steve Wulf wrote an apology column for ESPN The Magazine.
Wulf, the decorated longtime journalist, reported and wrote an even more detailed mea culpa in April 2019 for the same publication on the 25-year anniversary of Jordan’s baseball foray.
That experiment, which followed Jordan’s stunning first retirement from basketball, is also viewed more favorably by decades falling off the calendar, including in Episode 7 of ESPN’s “The Last Dance” documentary.