Remember all the snickering, guffawing and ridicule over Tim Tebow becoming a baseball player? Guess what, jokers?
It seems Tebow is actually becoming a baseball player.
“He looks like a different guy than last year,” Hartford manager Warren Schaeffer to the New York Post.
That’s the paper that once ran the headline “Headless Body In Topless Bar.” Now critics must be losing their heads over the headline “Tim Tebow suddenly looking like pro baseball player.”
Tebow plays for the Binghamton Rumble Ponies, the Mets’ affiliate in the Class AA Eastern League. The Post surveyed opposing managers to get a gauge on Tebow’s progress.
Tebow has not been sensational, but his progress has been impressive.
“I saw him last year at (Class A) Columbia. He’s come a really long way,” Schaeffer said. “He’s a tough out right now. We had a really tough time against Tim Tebow. He hits fastballs well. He’s a strong kid. His approach has gotten a lot better.”
Tebow was batting .256 with five home runs and 27 RBIs heading into this week. But his OPS (a statistic that measures on-base percentage and slugging average) was .737.
That’s 81 points higher than last year, and the statistics keep trending up. Tebow had reached base in 11 of 15 games and batted .315 in that stretch.
“We’ve got guys who’ve been playing five, six, seven years not having the success he’s had at Double-A,” Harrisburg manager Matt LeCroy said. “A lot of people probably thought he could not do that and now he’s starting to thrive in Double-A.”
A lot of people?
The precise number might be everyone on the planet except Tebow.
Even his biggest admirers probably feared his baseball excursion would fizzle out in the low minors. Tebow hadn’t played baseball since 2006, his junior year at Nease High School.
In between, he helped Florida with two national football championships, won the Heisman Trophy, led the Denver Broncos to the playoffs, built a hospital in the Philippines, became a hero to millions with his Good Guy persona, became an irritant to millions with his Good Guy persona….
On and on it went until he was (choose one) blackballed out the NFL or mercifully released after proving he’d never be a fulltime quality quarterback.
Whatever your choice, there’s no debating what baseball experts thought when Tebow showed up at the Arizona Fall League in 2016.
“His presence here is a farce, and he looks like an impostor pretending to have talent he does not possess,” ESPN’s baseball insider wrote.
“There’s no hope this thing turns around,” Fox Sports wrote. “Scouts - given no choice but to evaluate this out-of-place media member - have been turning in scathing reports about Tebow’s long swing, poor fielding, and bad pitch recognition.”
So what do scouts say now?
“He is better,” one told the Post. “He has shown the ability to hit the fastball. Not a double-plus fastball, but an average fastball. He has progressed. He still misses a lot of pitches down. The changeup, he doesn’t see at all.’’
So he’s not Mike Trout, but apparently there is more than a little hope he is turning this thing around.
“To hold your own after being out of it for however long he had been, you got to give the guy credit,” New Hampshire manager John Schneider said. “Baseball is a hard thing and hitting is a really hard thing. To show improvement and hold his own here in Double-A is pretty impressive.”
Those suffering Tebow Derangement Syndrome will next declare him a failure if he doesn’t make it to the Majors. But Tebow never judged success that way.
His only goal was to see how good he could be and enjoy the journey. It’s amazing what a tireless work ethic, unwavering faith and not listening to critics can do.
“I’m improving, seeing pitches, leaving some bad pitches,” Tebow told the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin. “I’m trying to be more direct to the baseball to do more damage with it.”
If he keeps improving, the real damage will be to the egos of all those who weren’t just (understandably) skeptical of Tebow’s chances, they were laughing at the thought he’d ever amount to more than baseball joke.
Who’s laughing now?
