Tim Tebow: Baseball player?
By: Craig Epstein | Published Sept. 24, 2016
On Thursday, Sept. 8, the New York Mets did what 29 other major league teams were unwilling to do: they signed former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow to a minor league contract. This came as a surprise to not only the baseball world, but the sports world as a whole.
The following is a brief synopsis of Tim Tebow’s short NFL career: Tebow was drafted 25th overall in the 2010 NFL draft by the Denver Broncos. The former Florida quarterback took the starting position from Kyle Orton in the middle of the season. To the surprise of many he took the Broncos all the way to the playoffs where they beat the
Pittsburgh Steelers. After the season, the former Heisman trophy winner found himself out of a position with Denver because they had decided to sign legendary quarterback Peyton Manning. After that, he floated around a couple of other organizations until he ultimately found himself out of the NFL.
There are a lot of ‘what if ’s’ when it comes to Tim Tebow’s NFL career. What if the Broncos never decided to sign Peyton Manning? What if he never went to the New York Jets, who were viewed as a circus at the time? What if he listened to many people in football and switched his position? Unfortunately for him, the sports world is not about the what ifs, it is about what is.
I asked Kean University’s very own Professor Hunt, who is a big time Mets fan, what he thought of the signing. “If you purely look at it from the stance of Tim Tebow making the MLB, I would say the odds of it happening are remote. If their goal is to re-sign Yoenis Cespedes, then it’s more understandable considering he and Tebow share the same agent,” Hunt said. “And, the agent might be more willing to negotiate.”
Tim Tebow is just trying to live out his dream of becoming a professional baseball player. It is a little fishy that out of all of the teams that would sign him it is the Mets, considering the feeling among MLB scouts is that he is not any good.
Many Mets fans have a feeling that their owners, the Wilpons, run a very stingy organization. Their most recent decisions were to not re-sign now NL MVP candidate Daniel Murphy while they had hesitance in re-signing their slugger Yoenis Cespedes to a long-term contract. Is this a case of the Mets bringing in a big name with a lot of appeal in order to boost ticket sales? Or is this a very strategic move in order to appease the fanbase and sign Cespedes to that long-term deal? Only time will tell.
Tim Tebow will begin his professional baseball career on Sept. 19 for the fall instructional league which is located in Port St. Lucie, Florida. He is sure to be determined to prove his doubters wrong again.
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