Mark Hendrickson had a fascinating dual-sport career, being on the business end of an iconic Michael Jordan photo and allowing Ken Griffey, Jr.’s 600th home run.
The house, located on a quiet street in York, Pa., stood empty, the man who had lived there having died months short of his 100th birthday. And on a rainy Saturday morning in March, the place was up for auction.
The auctioneer, surrounded by a small group of interested parties, stationed himself beneath a blue canopy in the driveway. He quickly went to work, the words seeming to spill out of him in time with the raindrops striking his makeshift shelter.
Before too long the bidding reached $235,000. Then the pace slowed and the pool of potential buyers dwindled to two, one of them a tall guy with a salt-and-pepper beard. He stood a few feet away from the auctioneer and just inside the garage door, out of the rain that had begun leaking through the canopy.
“236 … 236 … 236 …” the auctioneer barked.
Someone in the driveway agreed to that price, compelling the auctioneer to bump it up by $1,000.
The tall man in the garage was game.
And on and on it went: 245 … 246 … 247 …
The guy in the driveway kept upping the ante. But so too did the tall man.
248 … 249 … 250?
The auctioneer turned once more toward the guy in the garage. He nodded, looking for all the world like a pitcher accepting a sign from his catcher.
That tracks, since the bidder in question, Mark Hendrickson, did in fact pitch in the major leagues for a decade. A 6-foot-9 lefty, he saw action for Toronto, Tampa and Baltimore, as well as the Dodgers and Marlins.
Yet those were only a few of the hats he wore in his professional career, one that stood as a monument to multitasking.
He started out not as a pitcher but as a forward with the 1996-97 Sixers, and went on to play parts of four NBA seasons. Hendrickson is one of only 13 men to ever compete in the NBA and the big leagues, and his was something of a Gumpian existence.
At different times he was a teammate of Allen Iverson and the late Roy Halladay. He was somehow chosen in no fewer than six consecutive major league drafts, and had roles (though surely not the ones he would have preferred) in significant moments involving Michael Jordan and Ken Griffey Jr. One other thing: His most enduring baseball achievement might very well involve something he did not on the mound, but rather with his bat.
Hendrickson’s career numbers will overwhelm no one, and he admits that relative to other pros his skills “were not exceptional” — high 80s fastball, decent curve, etc. But at age 50 (and 13 years removed from competing at the highest levels), he makes no apologies. He is proud of the fact that he doubled up in professional sports, proud of the fact that he occupies exclusive real estate.
“I can’t say I would do it differently,” said Hendrickson, a married father of four daughters who owns a York-based real estate company, Major League Properties.
The list of those who have played MLB and in the NBA includes not only Hendrickson but also Danny Ainge, Frank Baumholtz, Hank Biasatti, Gene Conley, Chuck Connors, Dave DeBusschere, Dick Groat, Steve Hamilton, Cotton Nash, Ron Reed, Dick Ricketts and Howie Schultz.
DeBusschere, a two-time title-winning forward with the Knicks in the ‘70s after pitching for the White Sox, was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983. Connors, who played 67 games for the old Brooklyn Dodgers and 53 for the Celtics in the ‘40s and ‘50s, is better known as the star of the long-ago TV show “The Rifleman.”
Groat was a five-time All-Star shortstop with Pittsburgh after playing a single season for the Fort Wayne Pistons. Ainge washed out as a Blue Jays infielder but started at guard on two Celtics championship teams in the ‘80s; he is now the Utah Jazz’s CEO of Basketball Operations. Reed spent eight of his 19 major league seasons as a Phillies reliever, having also played hoops for Detroit.
Not to be forgotten, either, are that Baseball Hall of Famers Bob Gibson, Tony Gwynn, Dave Winfield and Sandy Koufax all played major-college basketball.
As for Hendrickson, he was a Sixers second-round pick out of Washington State in 1996, the same draft in which Iverson went first. After a single season in Philadelphia Hendrickson played parts of three others with Sacramento, New Jersey and Cleveland, as well as in the CBA. He averaged 3.3 points and 2.8 rebounds in 114 NBA games, then went 58-74 with a 5.09 ERA in a decade as a major league pitcher, ending in 2011 with Baltimore.
He wonders if he might not be one of the last of his kind, given how prevalent specialization has become in youth sports, a $19.2 billion industry in the U.S. as of 2019, and one that by 2026 is projected to become a $77.6 billion business worldwide. The participants, or at least their parents, see the payoff being a college scholarship, and, perhaps, a sackful of NIL money.
“Now,” Hendrickson said, “Mom and Dad don’t have to have their kid get to the top of the pyramid.”
Generalists, as a result, figure to become even rarer than they already are.
“Don’t get me going,” Buck Showalter said when the topic was raised in a recent phone interview.
Showalter managed Hendrickson for a season-plus in Baltimore (2010-11) and spent 22 years as a major league manager in all, ending in 2023 with the Mets. Now an analyst for the MLB Network, he was taking in his 6-year-old grandson’s Little League game this spring when he saw something that defied imagination — travel-team coaches scouting the youngsters.
“I couldn’t help it,” Showalter said. “I said, ‘You guys should be ashamed of yourselves.’”
But failing to specialize often results in a failure to keep up, no matter the sport. Youngsters who branch out are often cast aside, left behind. Never mind that studies have shown that specialization frequently leads to overuse injuries and burnout; with the NIL carrot now hanging out there, it doesn’t appear things are going to change anytime soon. Not for youngsters, and not for those in their teens.
“The days of the three-sport athlete in high school are probably long gone,” said Dave Trembley, who also managed Hendrickson for a season-plus in Baltimore (2009-10).
There will still be baseball-football freaks like Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders every now and then. But guys like Hendrickson — those blessed with superb eye-hand coordination but not out-of-this-world physical gifts — have become far less common.
“I don’t think you’re going to see two-sport athletes for a very long time,” he said. “I just don’t see it, especially with college and NIL deals.”
His roots can be traced to the state of Washington, his family having moved there from York before he was born. At Mount Vernon High, an hour north of Seattle, he was part of two state championship teams in basketball and two others in baseball, while also competing in tennis.
The Atlanta Braves took him in the 13th round of the 1992 major league draft, but one of his grandfathers, a school administrator back in York, had always emphasized the importance of a college education. Mark also had his heart set on playing in an NCAA Tournament, so off to Washington State he went.
As it turned out, he appeared in the Big Dance exactly once while playing under Kelvin Sampson in Pullman, the Cougars losing a first-round game to Boston College to end Hendrickson’s sophomore year (1993-94). Still, he enjoyed a productive career, averaging 14 points and nearly nine rebounds, and the Sixers took him at No. 31 overall in 1996.
His arrival in Philadelphia caused barely a ripple, given the selection of Iverson atop the draft. Hendrickson appeared in just 29 games as the Sixers went 22-60 during the ‘96-97 season, though one of them — a 128-102 loss in Chicago on April 7, 1997 — lives on in memory.
That’s because at one point Hendrickson found himself as the only defender back when Jordan and a teammate rampaged downcourt on a two-on-one break. Jordan inevitably wound up with the ball, and Hendrickson decided he was going to try to draw a charge — a dubious decision, in retrospect.
“Rookie white boy vs. the greatest athlete of all time,” Hendrickson said. “Who do you think the call’s going to go against?”
The moment was captured by a photographer named Fernando Medina — Jordan, soaring over Hendrickson, the ball cradled in his right hand, his eyes fixed on the hoop — in a photo that would make Time-Life’s “Pictures of the Century” collection, and grace the cover of the 1997-98 NBA Register.
Despite all appearances to the contrary, Jordan — amid a routine 30-point performance and the Bulls’ second three-peat — did not dunk on the play. Nor did he get the basket, though he did nail his free throws. Doesn’t make Medina’s shot any less spectacular, though.
“To look at the pose that he did with that, I went, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Hendrickson said. “I mean, it’s a thing of beauty.”
Even if you happen to be the other guy in the photo. The one getting kneed in the chest by a flying GOAT.
“I just look stupid,” Hendrickson said.
He has come to grips with it, in no small part because his baseball teammates wouldn’t let him forget it. When Hendrickson pitched for the Marlins in 2008, the Palm Beach Post reported that some prankster had the photo blown up and hung in the clubhouse for all to see.
“He straight up got posterized,” pitcher Scott Olsen told the Post.
Hendrickson would always make it clear that everybody gets posterized in the NBA, and remind his baseball teammates of one other thing, too.
“I always pointed to people in the stands and said, ‘Oh, there you are. You’re watching,’” he said. “They shut up pretty quick.”
(Not to be forgotten, either, is that his baseball career turned out better than that of one Michael Jeffrey Jordan, who during a brief NBA respite never rose above Double-A.)
Hendrickson remembers the ‘96-97 edition of the Sixers as talented — “one of the most talented teams I’ver ever been on” — but dysfunctional. That club had a rookie head coach, Johnny Davis, who would be fired after that season. It also had, Hendrickson said, “two alphas” in Iverson and second-year man Jerry Stackhouse.
“Our chemistry was not good at all,” Hendrickson said.
Well before the Jordan play, he came to understand that NBA athletes are a different breed. In training camp that season, the Sixers’ post guys were asked to do a drill that involved repeatedly dunking a 10-pound medicine ball. Most guys, Hendrickson remembered, did it three or four times. Clarence Weatherspoon, then in the fifth of his 13 NBA seasons (and his next-to-last with the Sixers), did it “at least 15 times,” according to Hendrickson.
“That guy didn’t get tired,” he said of the 6-6 Weatherspoon. “He kept dunking, and I’m thinking, ‘Spoon, if you were just like four inches taller, (you) would have been a monster.’ It is what it is. People are blessed with different athleticism.”
Hendrickson split the ‘97-98 basketball season between Sacramento and the CBA’s LaCrosse Catbirds, then signed with the Toronto Blue Jays in May 1998, 11 months after they took him in the 20th round of the June 1997 draft. Again, that was the sixth time he went in that selection process. Normally a prospect can only be chosen after his senior year of high school and/or his junior year of college, but because Hendrickson began his collegiate baseball career as a junior, he was selected repeatedly.
Besides Atlanta in ‘92 and Toronto in ‘97, he went to San Diego in the 21st round in ‘93, Atlanta (again) in the 32nd round in ‘94, Detroit in the 16th round in ‘95 and Texas in the 19th round in ‘96.
He divided his time between the minors, the NBA and the CBA from ‘98 to 2000, then devoted himself fully to baseball, making the majors for good in ‘02. He was a Toronto teammate of Halladay’s that season and the next, when the future Phillies ace made his first two All-Star appearances and in 2003 won the first of his two Cy Young Awards.
That ‘03 season also saw Hendrickson become the first pitcher in Blue Jays history to homer, when he connected on June 21 off Montreal’s Sun-Woo Kim. The only other Toronto pitcher to go deep was Marcus Stroman, in 2017 — no surprise, given the DH — and indeed Hendrickson never homered again.
He did surrender the 600th of Griffey’s Hall of Fame career, while pitching for the Marlins on June 9, 2008. But Hendrickson remains philosophical about that.
“There’s worse guys to give it up to,” he said. “It’s part of competing. You can’t change it. You learn to look back and say, ‘Hey, that’s part of my story.’”
In between his time with Toronto and Miami, there were stops in Tampa Bay and Los Angeles, with the Dodgers. Afterward, there was time with the Orioles. And if Hendrickson never achieved stardom, he was always respected, always well-liked. His teammates called him “Big Smooth” because of his unflappable manner. Also Big Sum, short for “Big Sumbitch.”
Showalter opted for “Easy Rider.”
“Didn’t a whole lot rattle him,” he said, adding that by the time he managed Hendrickson, he “wasn’t carrying the same bullets.”
“But if you still like a guy when he’s not performing great,” Showalter said, “you know that he’s a pretty good human being. Because Mark never made excuses.”
And that played well in the clubhouse.
“He was good with the young players,” Trembley said. “A very good role model. Real positive. Good work habits.”
The bottom line?
“He was a pro,” Trembley said.
Twice over, as a matter of fact. Always stuck to his principles. Always competed like hell. Still does, in fact. Consider that house he was bidding on, in March. Once the price inched beyond $250,000 — his maximum — he bowed out.
It was tough, though.
“I normally don’t go (to auctions),” he said. “I send some of my colleagues to go on my behalf, just because I’m competitive. And competitive can get you in trouble.”
So yeah, he continues to carry vestiges of his past, continues to give a nod (sometimes literally) to who he was. While he understands he is likely part of a vanishing breed, something deep within him can never be touched, never be changed. And he would have it no other way.