Alan Schwarz, a contributor to ESPN The Magazine, is filing regular Pulsecards from spring training. Today he chases an apparition from springs past.

Cody Ransom had no idea he was standing in the shadow of greatness.

His locker in the Giants' Scottsdale clubhouse -- right next to the showers -- once belonged to a legendary Hall of Fame player ... who hit .252. Someone named Michael Jeffrey Jordan.

Yes indeed, when MJ moonlighted in the Arizona Fall League in 1994 with the Scottsdale Scorpions, he dressed right here at this anonymous stall. He hit a whopping .252 with no home runs in 123 at-bats before retiring from baseball and, as you know, was never heard from again.

Jordan was quite the drawing card that fall in Scottsdale. One high school sophomore who came to see him play was a kid named Cody Ransom. "This was his locker, huh?" said Ransom, clearly humbled. "That's cool. We have the same birthday, too (February 17). Hopefully, things will work out a little better for me than they did for him -- baseball-wise."

Ransom is a slick-fielding shortstop who hit just .200 last year at Double-A Shreveport. When informed that Jordan beat him with a .202 average in his season at Double-A Birmingham, Ransom replied, "Well, I can 360 dunk."

The other Giants are not exactly jealous of Ransom's brush with greatness. In fact, outfielder Armando Rios was originally assigned to that stall but asked to be switched. "That's not a good locker," Rios said. "Everybody that's had it the last few years has had a bad year -- Alex Dias, another rookie, Dante Powell one year. Now you tell me Michael Jordan had it. What, he hit only .202. That proves it."

As you can probably imagine, Jordan did top his teammates in one regard that fall of '94 -- on the basketball court. He schooled the likes of Jason Giambi, Doug Glanville and other future big leaguers in a pickup game. He once hellaciously jammed on a trash-talking Curtis Goodwin and instructed him, "Tell that to your grandkids!"

No doubt, Ransom will do the same.

Alan Schwarz is covering spring training for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at als1492@aol.com.