Fort Myers Miracle To Host “What Can Tim Tebow Do?” Night

If you’ve been away from social media for the morning, you’ve missed out on THE story in the baseball world. Florida Gators hero and former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow has decided he wants to try his hand at baseball. He played in high school, and decided there’s enough left in him to, after 10 years away from the game, hold a workout and invite scouts from all 30 clubs to see if he still has what it takes to sign him up and send him to the minor leagues.

Naturally, this is a boon to the world of minor league baseball. Just weeks after the Pokemon Go craze infected every ballpark in the country, Tebow Mania is about to take its place. The first team to jump on the craze? The Fort Myers Miracle of the Florida State League. This Thursday, the Miracle will hold “What Can Tim Tebow Do?” night at Hammond Stadium.

The evening will feature several activities poking fun at the idea that Tebow, at 29 years old, can decide on a whim that baseball is an arena he can be competitive in after such a long time away.

As part of the night, the Miracle will host a one-day job fair “for any fan looking for a mid-life career change.” The rationale? “Anyone can work in baseball! It’s so easy!!”

During the game, Fort Myers will use the traditional minor league tentpole of throwing a ball through a hole for money to remind fans of Tebow’s hit-or-miss NFL career.

“Two fans will be plucked from the stands to compete in an accuracy contest,” the Miracle explained in their press release. “While throwing four baseballs at a target, if the contestants hit the bull’s-eye with at least two of four attempts (bettering the 47.9 percent completion rate from Tebow’s NFL career), the winner of the contest will take home a pair of Miracle tickets and, naturally, a bowl of Gator Bite Cheese Curds.

The Miracle aren’t the only team to jump on the Tebow bandwagon. The Tennessee Smokies, the Cubs’ affiliate in the Double-A Southern League, quickly Photoshopped Tebow into one of their uniforms and told him there’d be a spot available in their bullpen if his gambit got as far as Double-A.

Not to be outdone, the Smokies’ rival Birmingham Barons pulled the same photo-editing trick, this time with the added angle of reminding fans that another uber-famous athlete, Michael Jordan, played for the Barons when he decided to dabble in baseball during the 1994 season after his retirement from the NBA. 

Jason Dambach, the general manager for the Frisco RoughRiders, said the only parallel to Tebow, if he were to land on a minor league roster at some point, would be what the Barons went through when Jordan joined their club 22 years ago.

“I think it would be unlike anything any of us have ever seen, at least those of us who have worked in minor league baseball since 1994, when Michael Jordan was on the scene in the Southern League,” he said. “I think if Tim Tebow were to play minor league baseball, I can only imagine in today’s age of social media and the video element that those in minor league baseball have now that we didn’t have in 1994, I think it would be unlike anything we’ve ever seen in professional baseball.”

Whether Tebow has the talent to go pro in baseball after such a long layoff is questionable. If some team does decide to take the gamble, however, rest assured that club’s minor league affiliates will burn up their farm director’s cell phone begging him to send Tebow to their city.