Rumble Ponies riding Tebowmania
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — Before the minor league season started here, a local news anchor asked a sports reporter if one of the new players on the Binghamton Rumble Ponies was a good baseball player. “No, not really,” the reporter said. The player in question is an anomaly. His talent on the field is beside the point. He is Tim Tebow, a former Heisman Trophy-winner and NFL quarterback whose celebrity transcends sports. A lot of people seem interested in whatever he’s doing, whether it’s football, baseball, canasta or pickup sticks.
Before he played in his first game last month for the Rumble Ponies — the New York Mets’ Class AA affiliate — Binghamton had a touch of Tebow fever.
Downtown businesses had perked up, counting on an influx of new customers. There were Tebow-themed menu items, like Beer Tree Brew Co.’s Tebow Time IPA, served at Craft Bar and Kitchen, and an array of Tebowinspired sandwiches elsewhere. Local churches have coveted his presence.
Tebow briefly put the focus on baseball when he launched the first pitch of his first at-bat over the rightcenter-field wall at NYSEG Stadium in front of 5,247 fans,
the most to attend a home opener here in nearly 25 years, despite near freezing temperatures.
“I’ve played in colder in football, but that’s probably the coldest baseball game I ever played,” Tebow told reporters after the game. “It was a great day, it was a fun day, but it was just one day.”
Through 28 games, Tebow’s statistics were modest: a .261 batting average with three home runs and 12 runs batted in. But, again, that stuff hardly matters with Tebow.
What has become known as the Tebow effect — the economic benefits generated by his celebrity — comes at a fortunate time for Binghamton, a proud baseball city that was on the verge of losing its team just a couple of years ago.
Just don’t tell the Rumble Ponies owner John Hughes that his club got lucky landing Tebow.
“Things don’t just happen, buddy,” said Hughes, who entered the picture with a plan to save baseball in Binghamton in December 2015, well before Tebow was on the city’s radar. “You put your nose down and get after it and get to work and good things are going to happen. That’s kind of how I live my life.”
Hughes, a gregarious businessman and defense contractor based in Georgia, has tried to revamp the franchise, whose total home attendance was last in the Eastern League each season from 2010 through 2015.
“I do everything at the stadium from make nachos to write big checks,” he said. “I’m not the smartest guy in the world. I’m not the most talented person. But I’ll get out there and work as hard as anybody else.”
With no previous ties to the region, he led a group (Evans Street Baseball Inc.) that purchased the Binghamton Mets (as they were then known) in 2015, after the team’s deal with a different ownership group that would have moved it to Delaware fell through.
“His commitment to this community is huge,” said Judi Hess, director of the city’s tourism office. “So to have something like this happen under his watch is awesome too because it’s like a little bit of payback for his personal investment and his belief in our community.”
Other towns have experienced the Tebow effect. When Tebow was a backup quarterback for the New York Jets in 2012, crowds of fans flocked to training camp in Cortland, N.Y., about 40 miles north of Binghamton. The visitors bureau projected that about $1 million of additional revenue would be injected into the small town’s economy.
In Tebow’s first stint in minor league baseball, with the Class A Columbia Fireflies in South Carolina, attendance grew by about 750 fans per home game — or $600,000 in revenue for the club, Baseball America estimated. His next stop was Port St. Lucie, Fla., where the Class A Mets soon experienced record attendance.
“It was nice being able to play in front of people,” said Peter Alonso, a top Mets prospect here who also played with Tebow in Port St. Lucie.
Tebow, who hit .226 with eight homers and 52 runs batted in with the two Class A teams in 2017, has tried to keep the focus on baseball during his time in the Mets’ system. But he is aware of his off-field impact.
“If there’s a way I can help a community and be someone that can be a little bit of a light, whether that’s visiting a hospital and encouraging kids, bringing hope or maybe even helping the economy, that would be awesome,” Tebow told reporters last month.
He signs a lot of autographs before games, but has kept a low profile around town in the little time he has had here. The few sightings included him shopping for furniture at Olum’s and getting a healthy lunch at CoreLife Eatery. Tebow will also speak at First Baptist Church of Johnson City on May 21.
He has yet to try the many food and beverage items that bear his name, including the Tebow Time IPA.
“He doesn’t drink, which is unfortunate for him, in my opinion,” said Don Titus, the general manager of Craft Bar and Kitchen. “Given the opportunity, I’d love the chance to try to convince him, or at least have him in for dinner.”