Philadelphia Eagles

Tim Tebow isn’t taking his new baseball career seriously

Published Nov. 15, 2016 2:58 p.m. ET

foxsports

Former excellent amateur and mediocre-at-best professional football player turned broadcaster Tim Tebow wants to be a professional baseball player now. You might have heard about this whole ordeal.

He put out some feelers, released a couple of videos, got some baseball people to vouch for him and then got all but two teams to show up for media-spectacle showcase at USC.

Some scouts loved his power and the 29-year-old’s potential. Some scouts thought the entire thing was a joke — “If (his swing) was any longer, it would take out the front row,” said one scout, probably unaware of the irony.

But it doesn’t matter if scouts liked it or not — Tebow found one team to bite. Thursday morning, the Mets announced that they had signed the Heisman Trophy winner to a minor-league deal that will first send him to the team’s fall Instructional League.

There’s a catch, though: Tebow won’t be available to participate in the Instructional League every day because of his broadcasting obligations with ESPN.

Tebow wants to be a baseball player, just so long as it doesn’t interfere with his day job.

Most people call that a hobby.

It only serves the narrative that this baseball thing is an ornate publicity stunt by the media-savvy former quarterback. First, he was able to get a deal with Adidas out of it, and now, deliberately or not, the Mets are in on the jig. Why are they doing this? Good question. It's certainly not a good look for a team looking to win the pennant again.

Tebow has an incredible hill to climb to become a major-league baseball player — only 10 percent of minor leaguers ever reach the show — and he’s a 29-year-old man who hasn’t played anything close to serious baseball in more than a decade. Not going all-in on baseball is hubris — the rules for success don't apply to him.

Tebow’s commitment isn’t to playing baseball — he admitted that himself Thursday. He said he’s “fully committed” to his job at ESPN — which, to be fair, he is good at — despite signing with the Mets.

But you can bet that if Jimmy Garoppolo were to be injured in Week 1, and the Patriots — for whatever unforeseeable reason — called and asked Tebow to bring his long throwing motion up to Massachusetts and play QB, he would tell ESPN that he was going to be taking a break for a while. He wouldn’t think twice about abandoning his post for that professional sports opportunity.

The professional baseball players Tebow will be competing with and against — when he’s not doing TV work, of course — have played baseball every day of their lives. They’ve dedicated their youth and now their early adulthood to making the major leagues. They're consumed by the goal and will do whatever it takes to achieve it. Every single one of them is talented and successful, but despite total commitment and massive sacrifice, only 10 percent will reach their goal.

Baseball is a game of adjustments — you need to be obsessed with getting better to survive and advance. If Tebow thinks that he can be successful without matching his peers' level of commitment, he’s going to get embarrassed.

Hopefully, they don’t edit that footage out of documentary mini-series.