Tebow time
Tim Tebow homers in his first official minor league at-bat with the Mets’ low-Class A team,
Tim Tebow has a way of rewriting scripts, of changing course when one least expects it, which is how he ended up here in the first place, clad in the fluorescent colors of the Columbia Fireflies, four stops and thousands of miles from Citi Field and the New York Mets club that indulged his dream.
Launch a baseball career after bottoming out as an NFL quarterback? Tebow was not joking.
Launch a baseball about 375 feet to the opposite field for a home run in his first true professional atbat? Well, that happened, too, and you almost had to be at Spirit Communications Park to believe it.
After failed stints in the Arizona Fall League and spring training ’s Grapefruit League that bordered on the embarrassing, Tebow accepted his minor league assignment to this low Class A outpost fully aware of the virtually impossible odds to reach the major leagues at age 29.
That doesn’t mean he’s not capable of producing occasional Tebow magic on the diamond. In his first atbat as a bona fide minor leaguer, he drove a 2-1 pitch from Augusta lefty Domenic Mazza off and over the fence in left field for a two-run homer, sending an overflow crowd into a disbelieving frenzy.
The shot came in the second inning of Tebow’s first game with the Mets affiliate and came on the heels of a spring training performance in which he struggled in Grapefruit League exhibitions against major league clubs, getting four hits in 27 at-bats (a .148 average).
It appears he’ll like lower minor league pitching a little better.
Tebow grounded out in his second at-bat, against reliever Matt Solter, but the pitcher he took deep does have some pedigree. While Mezza is a far cry from Max Scherzer — the 2016 National League Cy Young Award winner who struck him out on three pitches last month — he’s far from a novice. Mezza, 22, posted a 3.93 ERA in 14 starts in the South Atlantic League last season.
After fouling off a pair of pitches and deftly laying off a curveball in the dirt, Tebow — with fans clad in his jersey from the University of Florida and Denver Broncos and even freshly purchased Fireflies Tebow T-shirts — created his first bit of baseball lore, knocking the ball over the leftcenter-field wall, pausing before an umpire signaled home run and then pumping his arms in exultation.
It was an electric moment on a night that saw curiosity give way to reality. For the first time, the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner’s name was written into a regular-season baseball lineup, which meant somebody else’s was not.
It meant that the thousands of fans didn’t just have to root for anonymous minor league laundry — rather, they could pay $25 for the Tim Tebow Fireflies T-shirt jersey.
It meant one of sport’s most enduring love affairs — that between Tebow and his fans clustered largely in the lower far right corner of the USA — was rekindled.
That’s the easy part for Tebow. There will always be a job for him, most likely, at the SEC Network, where his telegenic aura and college football bona fides — two national titles at the University of Florida, that Heisman, a cultlike following even among opposing fans — ensure a high profile.
This baseball slog? Well, the short bursts last fall and this spring give way to a five-month grind that might embarrass a less humble man. It’s bound to test even relentlessly positive Tebow.
“The real deal starts tonight,” Columbia manager Jose Leger told USA TODAY Sports before Thursday’s game. “The numbers count, now. We’ll see how he does.”
Leger toggles between his awe at Tebow’s progress — “By the end of spring training, I was amazed and very impressed with him because of how much he progressed,” he says — and the pragmatic reality that at 29, with a bat that looked too slow for major league standards this spring, the odds are very much against the Fireflies’ most famous player.
“He’s aware of it,” Leger says. “He doesn’t say anything about it. He knows what’s at stake here. He knows his goals. He’s prepared for it. It’s just going to be a matter of the results.”
Tebow finished 1-for-5 in the Fireflies’ 14-7 victory, striking out three times including twice looking.
By all indications, the Mets want to find out soon. Leger says Tebow is “going to be playing mostly every day” for the low Class A affiliate, save for the occasional day off. And that means someone else won’t be playing.
To that end, Leger has huddled with every member of the Fireflies, never mentioning other players’ names, only to stress to them: This is your job, this is how much you will play every week.
“I also tell them this is subject to change,” he says. “Could be because of your performance, somebody getting hurt, someone getting promoted to get you more or less playing time, so it’s up to you from here on out.”