The New York Mets have made a cross-sports splash by signing Tim Tebow.
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Tebow’s commitment to baseball did come under immediate scrutiny, however, when he confirmed he would be missing various days of the three-week instructional camp in Port. St. Lucie, Fla., to continue his TV broadcasting work with the SEC Network and ESPN. Another team besides the Mets and Braves interested in signing Tebow was reportedly the Colorado Rockies. Tebow is 29 years old, much older than the typical baseball prospect.
Contracts are contracts, but those who weren’t taking Tebow’s baseball quest seriously to begin with certainly won’t be impressed by this development. But, we all know how that turned out, ” said Tebow with a self-deprecating laugh. “I think any player evaluation starts with tools and from that standpoint, without grading everything out, suffice it to say that Tim has been a great athlete”.
Tebow played for the Denver Broncos and New York Jets in the National Football League from 2010-2012.
The New York Mets’ Garth Brooks moves in to provide backup for Melvin Mora on March 19, 2000.
“It’s not a typical one-off player evaluation in the sense that we evaluate the tools and make a judgment”.
“Ten teams offered Tim Tebow a contract”, Cowherd said, via Kyle Koster of the Big Lead. “When I felt like I had this opportunity, I wanted to take it and pursue it with everything I had”. In 2000, the Mets reached an agreement with Garth Brooks on a minor-league deal, adding the country singer to the team’s roster for spring training.
Tim Tebow on his baseball pursuit.
Tebow said giving up baseball was the “second-hardest decision” he ever had to make, the first, presumably, being his choice to pick Florida over Alabama for college football. The Mets’ roots run pretty deep in Port St. Lucie, also the home of their spring-training operations, and the FSL is notorious for terrible, very bad attendance numbers (the Lakeland Tigers have averaged 334 [!] fans per game this season). The team would undoubtedly like to have him back, and it could be Tebow’s acquisition represents something of a goodwill gesture between the Mets’ front office and agent Brodie Van Wagenen.
That was followed by a perfectly uninspiring thought from the new member of the Mets’ organization himself.
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No word yet on how the Mets view Tebow long term, but for now, the ex-NFLer has the shot he hoped for.
