A Tim Tebow trip to Hagerstown shows why his journey is about more than baseball
Tebow still isn't hitting, but he's having a monumental impact on fans and teammates alike
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20 min read
HAGERSTOWN, MD – The bus rolled up to the Sleep Inn and Suites in this cozy outpost, tucked just south of the Mason-Dixon line -- which divides Maryland from Pennsylvania, and once delineated much, much more -- a little after 7 a.m. Thursday morning. About nine hours earlier, and 497 miles away, it had departed from the parking lot of a tiny stadium in Columbia, South Carolina, where Tim Tebow, fresh off another 1-for-4 night, had tossed his duffel bag into the storage area below along with a bunch of unknown 19-to-22-year-old kids, and settled in for an uncomfortable overnight journey.
Welcome to the South Atlantic League. Welcome to the latest chapter in Tim Tebow's life.
The former Heisman Trophy winner, the former NFL first-round pick, the highly compensated ESPN college football broadcaster -- a quarterback/brand with worldwide recognition for his devout religious beliefs and willingness to fervently embrace them -- is now two months into his pursuit of his latest athletic dream, with marginal-at-best results in the batter's box and in left field, but boffo returns, otherwise, by and large.
Tebow, who turns 30 in August and had not played organized baseball since high school, is drawing record crowds throughout the 14-team Sally League, which sprawls from Georgia to New Jersey, with franchises in South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia and Maryland as well. Fans line up for hours before games and pack otherwise sparse stadiums just to get close to a man whose very presence, to them, connotes much more than sports.
Business, suddenly, is booming for the Columbia Fireflies and Tebow, who signed with the New York Mets organization after a showcase last winter, is drawing rave reviews from teammates and opposing players, as you might expect, for being a hard worker and all-around great dude. You'll have no problem getting any of them to vocally support Tebow's major-league ambitions, no matter how bleak the odds, while the baseball community continues to scoff at what they see as an obvious marketing ploy. Tebow's travels, to them, are a traveling freakshow of sorts.
It's terrain Tebow knows quite well by now, as he has been nothing if not polarizing going back to his unorthodox quarterbacking style while leading Florida to the national title. He strives so much to be "just one of the guys," but hasn't been for quite some time, living a daily dichotomy as a coveted motivational speaker and pitchman, someone whose books are obsessed over by some who share his beliefs (there were plenty of autobiographies, and Bibles, thrust upon him to sign in Hagerstown), and perhaps the only regular player in South Atlantic League history with an on-field bodyguard and his own media policy (Tebow speaks to the media roughly as often as a starting NFL quarterback might, and always in a group setting).
His dance with fame remains staccato and love/hate; the last time he played professional sports, in Philadelphia in 2015, he was America's most talked about, most iconic, backup-quarterback hopeful, before losing out to Mark Sanchez, again; now he is the No. 8 hitter in a shallow lineup for a low A-ball team who batted .194 in the month of May, yet is the biggest singular draw in all of minor-league baseball.
"It's pretty crazy with what he's done in the NFL, and what he's done, like, with people around the whole world, the impact he's made is just incredible," said Fireflies first baseman Dash Winningham, 21, an eighth-round pick by the Mets in 2014. "To have him as a teammate, a guy like that, is unbelievable. He's older than us, but you can learn a lot from him off the field as well.
"We try to pick his brain and learn a lot from him, and he picks our brain, too, and tries to learn from the guys who have been playing for years and years. Me, being from Ocala (Florida), like 30 minutes from Gainesville, I grew up watching him play at the University of Florida, and back home he was kind of like a god. So, it's been a lot of fun, and all of us are fortunate to have him as a teammate."
Tebow's arrival was huge news here.
Preparations began weeks ago, as this is no ordinary series. It's the Fireflies only trip to Hagerstown, about 70 miles from Baltimore and Washington, DC, one of the northernmost teams in the league, and the Hagerstown Suns staff was bracing for overflow crowds for the weekend four-game series, which comes at a time when the weather seems to have finally turned after a cold-and-rainy May and before vacation season takes locals to the beach. Most seats were long ago sold. The local Sonic fast food restaurant greeted the Fireflies when their bus turned off nearby Route 70 ("Welcome Tim Tebow. Go Suns!), and excitement was high.
"This is definitely a big deal for us," said Kevin Gehl, the Suns director of broadcasting and media relations. "The bump we get from this series is huge. We'll see it in our revenue, and our average attendance at the end of the season.
Suns players had been chattering about the upcoming series for a while, and everyone in Washington Country seems well aware of who was coming to town June 1-4. Needless to say, the Suns got the word out.
"They sure published it enough that Tim Tebow was coming," said Suns second baseman Angelo La Bruna, a huge Tebow fan who used to work out with him in Southern California. "Everybody knows he is here."
The Suns weren't sure exactly what time Tebow's bus would arrive -- the Fireflies had hosted the Augusta GreenJackets for a 7 p.m. game Wednesday night -- so they had team personnel waiting at the Sleep Inn very early. They wanted to make sure everything was secure and get a handle on what time their visitors would be arriving at the ballpark. There was some angst over whether or not Tebow would be in the lineup -- it was on the heels of the Fireflies' longest bus ride of the season, and Tebow hadn't exactly been lighting it up at the plate. Many regulars would get a day off in a series of this nature.
The Suns had contracted with an outside private security guard to be Tebow's shadow the entire time at the ballpark, and they went over the protocols with him. Team employees had absorbed the Mets/Fireflies media policy that would be in effect as well as a very strict clubhouse policy (virtually no one who wasn't a Fireflies coach, player, or important team employee was allowed in). The Tebow Rules had long ago been hatched with the Mets collaborating with Tebow's representatives at mega-agency CAA; no way handling "the franchise" at home and road was just going to be left to a tiny minor-league franchise and its opponents.
Hagerstown, the Washington Nationals' SAL affiliate, had obtained overflow parking near Municipal Stadium, a charming bandbox that was constructed in a residential neighborhood (home runs occasionally land on a front lawn across Memorial Boulevard, and there are basketball nets in the main parking lot) in 1930; it is the third-oldest park in affiliated minor-league baseball and thus lacks some amenities and creature comforts, but is heavy on ambiance. The hand-operated scoreboard shows the line score on the original left-field fence. The guy working the grill in home-plate plaza wears a helmet during games to protect against foul balls. The grandstand looks largely original, and the small dugouts appear as if straight out of Doubleday Field.
The Suns wanted everything to be perfect. No one had seen anything close to this since 2011, when Nats ace Stephen Strasburg made a rehab start here. They decided to open the gates one hour and 45 minutes before the first pitch, instead of the normal one hour prior, to try to avoid logjams at the main entrance (sage decision, as by 5 p.m. the line stretched halfway around the stadium, hundreds deep).
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when the security guy assigned to Tebow showed up to the team offices, which naturally double as a manager's office, media office and storage space as well, around 3:30 p.m. The large metal gates were already in place to provide a cordoned-off area for the Fireflies' bus to pull into. "Normally, these gates are not here," I was assured, and about 75 people were already draped over it, hoping for a glimpse of Tebow.
When the charter bus did pull up in front of Municipal Stadium around 4:15, the entire back of it was adorned with an ad for an Evangelical book entitled "Kingdom Marriage," which may constitute the greatest unimaginable target-audience purchase in transit advertising history. Tebow was one of the last players off, donned in a hot pink golf shirt, earbuds firmly entrenched, but, alas, his bags were on the opposite side of the bus from the fans with the Broncos and Gators jerseys on. They never even saw him enter the visitor's clubhouse.
The Suns' clubhouse kids quickly ran around to make sure the visitor's door was locked from the outside; Tebow's security guard for the series awaited on the other side for the left fielder to emerge, and he would be by his side for the next four days anywhere in the stadium except on the field during games and in the clubhouse. Even the visiting batboy wasn't allowed inside the clubhouse, and Suns personnel who would normally go inside to ask the visiting skipper if or when they needed to take the field had to find intermediaries to convey the message. "I would usually just go in there myself," a member of the Suns' staff said to a Fireflies' staffer, "but I don't want to break any rules."
The Fireflies were already weary. They had bussed straight from their victory over Augusta, a game that ended after 10 p.m., to Hagerstown. Starting pitcher Gary Cornish was the first to emerge from the cramped clubhouse, quickly chatting with a Suns player he knew. "It's been a looong 24 hours," he told his buddy.
The team had checked into the hotel around 7:30 a.m. (a humble two-star -- at best -- hotel next to a Cracker Barrel), grabbed a quick breakfast (meal money and salaries are in short supply in this league) and tried to sleep away the afternoon. Other than an incident in Lakewood, NJ, where fans had tried to chase Tebow down in the lobby and hallways of their hotel, things have been relatively normal for the Fireflies on the road, they told me, save for the massive crowds greeting them outside and inside ballparks.
"When he's on the bus he's pretty quiet," Winningham said. "He always has his earbuds in and he's watching a TV show or something. He gets along with everybody and he doesn't try to big-league us or anything. He wants to get treated just like all of us. You can just tell he's trying to fit in and stuff."
I asked Winningham if the multi-millionaire had taken everyone to Ruth Chris' yet for a team dinner, or anything like that. Not yet. Tebow did buy a bunch of the guys Chipotle at the mall on the road, though, and the chicken chain he is a co-owner of, PDQ, does provide catering at some home games. "He takes care of us, he's a good teammate," Winningham said.
There would be no batting or fielding practice on this day given the rigors of their travel schedule, and even these fresh-faced 20-year-olds looked worn out. As Winningham, now in his fourth minor-league season pointed out, "these buses were better than the ones we've had in the past -- everyone pretty much had their own seat," but players and coaches were contorted oddly, even with a row to themselves, and stiff backs and sore necks were common. Of course, none of them approach Tebow, who at 6-foot-3, 250 pounds, dwarfs the rest of the team.
"This trip was an outlier for us," said Kevin Fitzgerald, the Fireflies director of broadcasting/media relations, whose job has swayed heavily into the media relations realm given the addition of such a unique player. "Usually the geography is in our favor with the way teams are clustered. This is about as long of a ride as we have."
Originally, this was to be Tebow's day to speak to the media, which generally occurs at the start of each road series. It's a canned 10 minutes or so, done outside the visitor's dugout. He is out-of-reach to the local media for the most part as well, except for usually once a homestand. With such a long travel day, a notice went out late Wednesday night that his press conference would be shifted to Friday afternoon. He remains the lone Firefly to do Jimmy Fallon, however. Dichotomies, always.
When Tebow does next address the ink-stained wretches, he will do so having played 44 games, hitting .225 with three homers and 15 RBI, tied for the team lead with 48 strikeouts, while playing a shaky left field. He entered Memorial Day in a .176 funk over his previous 21 games, with hits in just four of his previous 14 games, and skeptics abound, but one can easily predict Tebow's ever-positive message. He's now hit in three straight games, including a 2-for-3 performance on Thursday. He'll tell you, I'm sure, that he is trusting the process and getting better each day and living his dream and loving his teammates and doing what he was put on Earth to do. Tebow's message is as consistent as his career has been quirky.
"He handles everything really well," Winningham said, about to sound like a surrogate of sorts for his former football hero, "and you can never really tell if he's been struggling or not. He doesn't really show any emotion. He handles it really well. He's mature. And he's trying to go out there every single day and work hard. He knows he'll have ups and downs … You just have to trust that the work that you put in will pay off."
Those are Tebow Truisms, and there were to be many on display early in this series.
As one might expect, Tebow was the very first of the Fireflies position players to emerge with his bats from the visitor's clubhouse before 4:30, and he seemed a bit dazed. Another unfamiliar ballpark, a very long night. Tebow nearly walked through the Suns bullpen, and he would later be unsure which clubhouse was his, not unlike some teammates.
Thankfully, there was a familiar face to guide him.
La Bruna, the Suns' second baseman, darted over to him from right field, where his team had been stretching and warming up. The two chatted for several minutes. Turns out La Bruna saw Tebow regularly for about five months back in 2014, when Tebow was working with famed pitcher/throwing guru Tom House trying to relaunch himself as a more conventional quarterback.
La Bruna, a 33rd-round pick by the Nats in 2015, was transferring from Duke to USC at the time and had to sit out the season, using the USC facilities as the same time as Tebow to train but unable to work with the actual baseball team. Once in a while, Tebow would take a few cuts in the batting cage with La Bruna, showing off some raw power, but it was all football back then.
"Tim is a phenomenal guy, and what you see is what you get," La Bruna said. "He's a great guy. He did everything he could to help me in every way he could, and I'm really happy that he's doing well. I'm pulling for him. Absolutely, I'm pulling for him. He's such a great guy that you just want him to succeed and do well. He gets a lot of flak from a lot of people, and I think it's a shame, because he's just a guy trying to pursue his dream, just like we all are …
"He's not in this for any other reason but to get to the big leagues, right? So, it's really no different than what we're trying to do. It's not a publicity stunt. This guy is trying to pursue his dream, just like we are, and I think that's the consensus of how guys are looking at in our clubhouse. And of course guys want to see him, a former Heisman Trophy winner. They want to see what he looks like in a (baseball) uniform and see what he looks like swinging. So, yeah, it's exciting for a reason."
Several of the Suns players seemed taken aback at the sight of Tebow with a bat in his hand in his pre-game garb. "He's (bleeping) huge," as one put it. Tebow was the first to trek across the outfield to the indoor batting cages to hit off a tee and hone his craft. Yes, there would be no official on-field BP, but Tebow is always working.
"It's always like that, everyday," said Columbia hitting coach Joel Fuentes, who is in his 11th season coaching in the Mets organization. "That guy, it's amazing. He don't leave me alone. 'Hey Fuentes, let's go. Hey Fuentes, let's do this. Hey Fuentes, let's go work on this.' Sometimes you have to tell him, 'Hey, slow down, relax, and let's do everything that we're going to do as quality as can be. Not quantity.'
"It's a pleasure to have Mr. Tim Tebow with us, and our expectations is to get him in the process of being one of the guys and trying to make him as comfortable as he could be at the plate, and as comfortable as he can be playing defense, and then we'll see what's going on. There is no doubt he's very athletic, he's a smart kid, and the biggest thing for him is he's hungry. He likes the challenge and I think it's going to be extremely great to see this kid having success in baseball."
As one might expect, Tebow charges to and from left field most innings with a spring in his step, not sprinting but certainly not loafing. It's more than a job at times. He takes things very seriously in the on-deck circle, too, quick to dash out there, sometimes even before it had been totally vacated. He does not get cheated on his on-deck swings, either, cutting violently through the air. When a foul ball comes near him in the circle, he hunts it down and retrieves it for the bat boy. When he does reach base -- as he will do twice this night -- he is quick to give the opposing first baseman a hearty pat on the back.
He was the reason everyone was here.
By the time gates opened, the chants began, especially down the right field lines near the clubhouses. Luckily for him, youngster Brycen Frailey's family had rented out the birthday area quite adjacent to that clubhouse, and 90 minutes before game time he and his Little League teammates were screaming, "We want Tebow! We want Tebow!" They would end up getting first dibs on the star; as he finished playing catch in the outfield and headed to the clubhouse to put on his jersey, he stopped for them, the first of countless autographs he would sign this night.
"Last year there were maybe 200 people here when we played," Winningham said. "Now they're saying maybe 5,000 fans tonight? It's unbelievable. Pretty much every game we've played it's been full."
It's "unbelievable" from one perspective, but actually makes perfect sense. Some fans I talked to told me they drove three hours or more -- some from throughout Maryland, others from West Virginia and Pennsylvania -- to be here to see Tebow play minor-league baseball.
A few minutes before game-time, Tebow made his way down the entirety of the left-field line, near his dugout, signing more autographs ("This was more a (blank) show than when Strasburg was here," one fan told me after emerging from the burgeoning mosh pit), and then finally it was time to play ball.
Tebow would be called into action in the bottom of the first. He plays a generally shallow left field, relying on his athleticism it seems. A line drive came to his left, and he approached it somewhat mechanically before tumbling awkwardly to grab the ball and clinging to it for the out. It's fair to say he plays a muscular brand of outfield. Tebow made another routine putout in the inning, but misadventures were to come.
Tebow, batting eighth, led off the third inning and, after taking an inside pitch, laced the second offering opposite field, between the shortstop and third baseman for a single. It was a solid piece of contact off starter McKenzie Mills, who is having a stellar season thus far for the Suns. Tebow's leads would be cautious both times on base, however -- I thought he might flirt more with stealing a base after so many TD rumbles in college and the pros -- and it appeared Tebow lost track of a fly ball off the bat of teammate Desmond Lindsay on the base paths, getting caught up before eventually realizing the ball had cleared the right-field fence (with Lindsay now just a few feet behind him).
Tebow again singled his second time up, jumping Mills' first pitch this time and pulling it to the left of the second baseman. The left-handed hitter faced a lefty his third time up, reliever Jordan Mills, who displayed some wipeout stuff. Mills would end up striking out the side and pitching three scoreless innings for the save. Tebow engaged in a lengthy chat with Reed Gamache on his way to the on deck circle after Gamache struck out swinging to start the inning, looking for tips. But he too would end up striking out on four pitches, unable to come close to contact, seeming to want to pull everything as Fuentes noted many raw hitters are prone to do.
In the bottom of the eighth, with his team trailing by a run and with two outs, the Suns' Daniel Johnson lined what should have been, at most, a single, to left. But Tebow never quite read it, failed to get in front of the ball or analyze its spin, and it kicked to his right and all the way to the wall for a triple.
So what to make of it all?
Teammates will point to how long he's been away from the game, and his strength and ability to make contact as positives. But he is approaching 30 in a league where 24 is over the hill, and he is batting eighth on a team with the second-worst team batting average (.237) in a league that comprises lowest level of affiliated, professional baseball being played in America right now. Jordan Mills was fairly dominant on the night, and has been lately, but then again, he was out of affiliated baseball a year ago pitching in the Can-Am League. A top prospect, he is not.
Tebow is batting .114 versus lefties with 17 strikeouts in 44 plate appearances. Power is supposed to be his thing, but he has one homer in the last 41 games, with just 10 RBI in that span, and every at bat that he gets is one some developmental 20-year-old desperate to have some sort of pro baseball career loses out on.
I tried to approach one scout after the game to ask about Tebow's potential, and he just shook his head and walked away when he heard the name. There was nothing to speak about. Nothing to say. I asked a veteran National League scout who looked like he had been doing this for decades his impressions and got a similar response.
"I have been doing this for a long time, and I've seen him a lot this year, and I hope he's a good broadcaster," he chortled before more or less storming to the parking lot in disgust. The implication, strongly, was a baseball player he is not.
By then a massive wave of fans had formed down the right field line, near the visiting clubhouse, the game just completed and Tebow again signing away. The beefy security guy was right there next to him, and a Fireflies employee, seemingly assigned to the light-hitting left fielder, was holding Tebow's bats for him, and another hundred or so people were already camped out along those gates out by the team bus. The one with "Kingdom Marriage" on the back.
