Tebow fans keep faith as ex- QB tries baseball Story, Page 8
Tim Tebow says he’s following his heart, and a Florida crowd flocks to see the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner’s first workout with the Mets.
They shrieked the moment they spotted him on the baseball field. They gave him a standing ovation after each round of batting practice. The lively crowd, nearing almost 600, even cheered him during calisthenics.
Tim Tebow, the legendary University of Florida quarterback and newest member of the New York Mets organization, captivated this town Monday morning, with kids skipping school and adults calling in sick from work.
Andy Favata, a Florida alum with a Gators tattoo on his left ankle and wearing a Tebow jersey from his days at UF, brought his 13-year-old daughter, Bella.
Shouldn’t she be in school with her seventh-grade class?
“She felt sick today,” Favata said. “So it was take-your-daughter-to-work day. We had to be here.”
It was like that everywhere you looked among the legions of Tebow fans, some disguised as Mets fans, getting a firsthand look at one of the most popular athletes in Florida who helped the Gators to two national titles and also won a Heisman Trophy.
“I can’t think of a sports figure in today’s game that would have more of an impact,” said Paul Taglieri, the Mets’ director of minor league facilities, “Maybe a rock star. Or Jay Z. But not an athlete. In Florida, he’s an icon.”
The Mets minor league complex was swarming with 70 media members, a hovering news helicopter and 577 fans, many wearing the new Mets Tebow jerseys, vintage Tebow Florida Gators jerseys or even jerseys from his days with the Denver Broncos.
“Usually, we have maybe a mom or dad here,” Taglieri said. “A couple of scouts. And that’s about it. Nothing like this.”
It was a love-fest all morning at the Mets spring training complex, with temperatures in the 90s with stifling humidity and $3 bottled waters the only thing selling more than Tebow jerseys.
Tebow turned and smiled when fans asked for a picture during a water break. He smiled when someone asked whether he actually knew Peyton Manning. He picked up the baseballs after batting practice and even hauled a bag of balls to the dugout, not unlike the other 57 minor league hopefuls who joined him in this instructional league camp.
Tebow, 29, loved his first day as a Met, and baseball workouts are easier than NFL two-a-days, but he did feel a little old when he walked into the complex as the only player born in the 1980s.
No one knows if Day 1 in the Mets’ three-week instructional league camp will be the highlight of his professional baseball career. No one is giving him a realistic chance of reaching the big leagues, let alone ever becoming a star like Bo Jackson. Plenty of major league and minor league players, plus baseball executives, are convinced this is a farce.
Tebow hears the critics and says he’ll respond with his actions, truly believing he will wind up in the majors. If not, he will hardly consider himself a failure.
“A lot of people might say, ‘You have a chip on your shoulder.’ Well, I guess I have a little chip. But it’s not really the naysayers. It’s more that I want to prove the coaches right, the Mets organization, my teammates, and try to be the best player I can. More important, the best person I can.”
What’s the worst thing that can happen to him, Tebow figures. He’s told he’s not good enough? He gets released? Wasn’t cut out for Major League Baseball?
Tebow endured that anguish, and describes it in the first chapter of his soon-to-released book, when he was released by the New England Patriots in 2013.
“I’m doing it to pursue what’s in my heart,” he said, “and live out a dream and live life to its fullest.”
This baseball gig will take time, considering he last played in 2005 as a high school junior. So forgive him if he failed to hit a homer in his four rounds of batting practice. (He hit the right-field fence three times, drawing ovations.) Or that he threw a ball 20 feet over a teammate’s head while playing catch, sailing it over a 4-foot chain-link fence. Or that he couldn’t scoop up his first grounder in the outfield.
Tebow says he refuses to be identified by whether he gets to the show.
“It’s all about perspective and how you define things. For me, I’m going to be defined by giving it everything I have and being the best I can be and pursuing this with everything I have. If you don’t make it, will that be failing? No. ... Do what’s in your heart. Do what you’re passionate about.”
That passion, for Tebow, is baseball. On a steamy Monday, with fans believing it was important to support him, there was plenty of passion in return.
“To see him take a chance ... playing baseball,” Favata said, “it kind of gives all of us a little motivation to doing something maybe we wouldn’t want to try. That’s a great lesson for all of us, isn’t it?”