Tim Tebow wants you to know he is more than a football player. He’s hoping to add a second sport to his career (well, third if you consider ‘Tebowing’ an athletic event) by offering himself up to Major League Baseball. He will be showing off his baseball skills with an exhibition event in Los Angeles on August 30, where 20 different MLB teams are said to have agreed to watch him.
While it might seem like an abrupt shift in direction for Tebow, he hasn’t played an NFL game since 2012, according to ESPN, so it makes sense that he’s looking for a career change. Back in his high school days he was an all-state level baseball player and the Angels even floated the idea of drafting him right out of school. Instead, he matriculated to University of Florida on a football scholarship, picked up a Heisman Trophy and went the pro-football route. Now he’s falling back on his old past-time to take another swing at the big leagues.
For a year, Tebow has been training at a facility here in LA and reports are saying he's already caught the eye of the Dodgers, with whom he was in preliminary talks before the start of this year’s baseball season, but that has not panned out into a contract just yet. Two minor-league offers have come his way, but planning this showcase event suggests he may not be interested in settling for less than a MLB level club.
Not everyone seems sure that the football to baseball switch will be seamless for him, though. Some current baseball players have taken to Twitter to make fun of the idea and, when ESPN asked the man who managed Michael Jordan’s short-lived baseball career, he noted that the transition to professional baseball is “a little harder jump” than most athletes in other sports seem to realize.