Indra Nooyi and Michael Jordan: Just pals at a ballgame?

    When TBS panned over to Michael Jordan during Tuesday night's Yankees-Rangers game, the most surprising thing to many viewers was the woman sitting next to him: PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi.

    The Twittersphere lit up. "Maybe the Yankees need a DH?" commented Chris Yates (@chrisyates11). "He could learn from her," posited John Ross, Jr. (@johndrossjr).

    The basketball player and the executive who recently topped Fortune's Most Powerful Women list for the fifth consecutive year sat side-by-side behind home plate. When the cameras caught them, Nooyi was looking at her friend adoringly as the Airman gave a big, hearty laugh.

    A spokesperson for PepsiCo (PEP, Fortune 500) said that the two are "friends and longtime business partners" and the trip to the game was nothing but two pals enjoying the playoffs.

    "They enjoyed the game together," said the rep, "although probably not toward the end." Nooyi is apparently a huge Yankees fan, though not with the same fervor that she admired Jordan. In a 2000 article, BusinessWeek reported that Nooyi studied game tape of Jordan's Finals appearances with the Chicago Bulls, extracting lessons on teamwork and using MJ as a role model for management style.

    But the business partnership between the two hasn't been in the spotlight for many years, which raises questions about whether their outing is a sign that a larger deal is afoot. Jordan, who became a Gatorade-endorsed athlete in 1991 (the company is owned by PepsiCo), has not appeared in a spot for the sports drink since 2003, save for a voiceover at the conclusion of a bizarre eight-minute ad from the 2009 Super Bowl.

    That ad -- a Monty Python and the Holy Grail parody with Kevin Garnett and Usain Bolt -- left many either laughing or scratching their heads. At the conclusion of the "quest to find G" a wet dog rises from a bowl and, in Jordan's booming voice, tells them: "Honorable knights. G is not a place. G is inside of all of you." Then, as they all take big gulps from flasks, he says, "Glorious."

    A new campaign with Gatorade might indeed be glorious for Jordan, but also for the beverage giant which, until recently, had Tiger Woods as its greatest face.

    And ironically, in October 2009 -- just a month before the Woods story unraveled, triggering the greatest reputation slide in sports history -- Gatorade paid tribute to Jordan's induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame with an advertisement in which 14,641 Gatorade bottles were set up with lights to reveal a giant image of a famous MJ dunk. Jordan himself does not appear in the ad.

    Shifting from Woods back to Jordan may be just the kick the company needs.

    Indeed, a Gatorade deal would be more plausible than a Pepsi endorsement. Jordan was the face of Coca-Cola (KO, Fortune 500) for years, and the 1991 spot in which he soars to the moon to grab a Coke is perhaps too iconic to imagine that a switch to Pepsi would work.

    Or, of course, it could have just been two pals at a ballgame.