Calling a career audible

                                                                                                                               (Mark Brown photos)

After flaming out as a quarterback in the NFL, former Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow decides that, yes, he wants to be a major league baseball outfielder.

He finds an obliging partner, too, in the New York Mets, who sign the 29-year-old Tebow to a minor league contract eight years ago today.

Tebow’s journey begins a month later in the Florida Instructional League before the Mets skip over a real prospect to award the untested Tebow one of their few coveted roster spots in the prestigious Arizona Fall League.

In his first experience at pro baseball in the AFL, Tebow struggles to hit .194 with 20 strikeouts in 71 plate appearances.

Undeterred, the Mets in 2017 assign Tebow to Class A, where he splits his time between their full-season teams in Columbia and St. Lucie.

His line that summer includes a .226 batting average in 126 games, eight homers, 52 runs batted, 126 strikeouts in 486 plate appearances and a zillion dollars in jersey sales at the team store.

Tebow then shows genuine progress in 2018 at Class AA Binghamton, where he hits .273 in 84 games with six homers, 36 RBIs and another zillion dollars in merchandise sales.

Oh, Tebow still strikes out a lot with 103 of them in only 298 plate appearances at Binghamton.

Not that striking out at a 35-percent clip seems like such a big deal anymore in today’s game, so the Mets push Tebow in 2019 to Class AAA Syracuse, where – at age 32 before season’s end – his batting average drops to .163 in 77 games with four homers and 19 RBIs.

Merchandise sales still run high at Syracuse, though, but so does Tebow’s strikeout rate – hitting 37 percent with 98 strikeouts in his 264 plate appearances.

Alas for Tebow, his Quixotic adventure to the majors finally falls short in 2020 as Covid-19 wipes out the minor league season, leaving the former University of Florida quarterback to concentrate more his side hustles – being a television commentator for college football telecasts and making TV commercials.

He is much better at both of those.