Tebow will return to the NFL – as a tight end

The Tebow wager: Which sport will he try after he fails at this?

5 thoughts on “Tebow will return to the NFL – as a tight end

  1. No doubt each were huge economic boosts to their respective leagues but comparing their results and especially comparing AA and AAA numbers nearly 30 yrs removed from Jordan’s game action hold no relevance especially how the level of pitching and specialy have changed in that time.

    Did you play ball? I could not imagine picking up a bat 10-12 years after I last played competitivly and putting up the numbers each did but calling either a failure is just ignorant especially comparing their numbers vs those playing daily sing the age of 5…

    Hitting on it again but with emphasis calling a 30 yr old that gave professional baseball a try after playing college and pro football and making it to the games 2nd to highest level (even as a money grab) is amazing especially given the celebrity he is/was and how he would have seen the best of anyone throwing to him…

    1. Again, you are missing the point. I’ll write it in outline form.

      (1) He was arguably the worst player in the history of AAA ball.

      (2) But the Mets admitted that’s way better than anyone ever expected him to be.

      (3) So it’s obvious that they knew from the beginning that he had no talent and was hired to fill seats.

      Now there are some things that can be debated, but all of the things above are either undeniably accurate and factual, or fully admitted.

      Frankly, it is absolutely impossible to look at his on-field performance in AAA and find even the faintest glimmer of hope in it, and it’s obvious that his hiring was a stunt and a cynical money-grab, and yet you’re trying to call it a success. That’s roughly equivalent to saying that Eddie the Eagle was a successful ski jumper.

      Don’t get me wrong. Tebow made going to a baseball game a cool thing to do in many towns and small cities. There’s nothing wrong with giving a contract to somebody that is sure to perform poorly. The Mets are under no ethical obligation to fill the minor leagues solely with players that have potential. Operating a minor league system profitably is nearly an impossible task, and they have to come up with crazy promotions to attract fans. In this case, instead of marrying 100 couples in the infield, or giving a free crowbar to the first 100 people to bring a caged crow to the park, they hired Tebow.

      He was their Eddie Gaedel.

      Except that Gaedel actually had some potential. He earned a 1.000 on-base percentage that indicated he might have been a very effective pinch hitter if the league president hadn’t taken steps to prevent it.

  2. Your assessment is pretty harsh, his baseball career was far from a failure.

    The man is an athletic marvel, to not have played baseball since HS and play at the level he did its amazing!

    Not a Tebow fan but I do respect the man and wish him nothing but good luck and honestly sports are better with good people like him playing them.

    1. Totally wrong.

      He had a baseball career at all only because management knew that he would fill some seats. His performance on the field was completely incompetent at every level. His lifetime minor league OBP was .299, and his slugging average was .338. In AAA, the numbers were .240 and .255, which is about as low as the numbers ever go.

      (In comparison, Michael Jordan’s season with Birmingham produced numbers of .289 and .266 for the same two stats, earning him the baseball nickname “Señor Crappy” from the ever-cynical Norm MacDonald.)

      To place Tebow’s AAA performance in perspective, if he had played one more game and gone 1-for-6, he would have brought his batting average up! That is really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

      On the other hand:

      His baseball career was a great financial success. Baseball America estimated that he brought in an extra 2,500 fans per game, and he played in about 300 games. That’s 3/4 of a million tickets, plus concessions, souvenirs, jerseys, etc. Each incremental fan present in a minor league stadium is estimated to be worth $22, so Tebow created more than $15 million in value for the GMs in the leagues he played in.

      The baseball executives were not subtle about their intentions in employing Tebow. Mets president Sandy Alderson said that Tebow far exceeded their expectations. So imagine that. As bad as he was in AAA, one of the worst hitters in the history of AAA baseball, they never expected him to be that good, or even to get that high at all.

      So why did they hire him with such low expectations?

      Gee, I wonder.

      (Go back and read that financial paragraph. He brought in $15 million dollars and played for minor league salaries, which are basically measured in loose change and free sandwiches from Subway.)

  3. On the contrary, I think he’ll be a good TE — it’s really what he should’ve done in the first place after washing-out as a QB. He’s definitely got the size for it, and has good hands.

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