By Michael Shain
It’s early in the season, but Tim Tebow, the former Heisman Trophy-winning football player who has decided to try his hand at professional baseball, may be the best news the New York Mets have right now.
Playing for the Fireflies of Columbia, S.C., the Mets’ Class-A minor-league team, the 29-year-old former quarterback is not exactly burning up the South Atlantic League. But for an athlete trying to do something that just about no one has done successfully since Jim Thorpe jumped from one professional sport to another a century ago, it has been a promising start.
In his first four days as a professional baseball player, Tebow hit two home runs, including one in his very first at-bat, and has recorded nine RBI in his first nine games.
More important, he has become an instant star in Columbia, home of the state university and a rabid football town.
The Mets are picking up Tebow’s reported $1-million-a-year salary, but from the look of the long lines at the store inside Spirit Communications Park, he has already earned it back in T-Shirt sales. His No. 15 Fireflies jersey sells for $25 each — five bucks more than the plain team shirt — and there is a long wait at the check-out line to pay for it.
After much debate over whether or not he should be playing baseball, Tebow has been assigned to left field and the lower half of the batting order. Scores of fans line-up along the third-base line before game time in hopes he will stop on his way to warm-ups to sign some autographs.
He remains a long shot to make the big team, but don’t count Tebow out just yet.
