Tim Tebow isn’t a major-league ballplayer, and he isn’t a pro ballplayer in any but the barest, most literal sense. Certainly, if he weren’t famous for playing football and for not having been aborted, no one anywhere would pay him money to play baseball. Look at this shit!
Look at what this bozo is up to after half a year of being paid to play and develop his skills, working hard under the tutelage of professionals at the highest level of the field. Look at him jumping around in the box like a pilled-up monkey! Look at how he somehow corkscrews both legs at the same time! Look at how stiffly locked his front elbow is, and at his wide, sweeping follow-through! Kevin Costner looked far better—more fluid, more natural—when he got in on some spring training action four years ago. Tebow, by contrast, looks exactly like someone who learned how to hit by looking really intensely at a pile of baseball cards and working backwards from there.
Now, you know this, and I know this, and it seems ridiculous (because it’s belaboring the obvious) and unkind (because by all accounts Tebow is a wonderful guy and a good influence on his young teammates) to even say it, but it’s still true, and it makes this all the more ludicrous. Today, the New York Mets are putting this guy in a lineup with Curtis Granderson, Yoenis Cespedes, and Noah Syndergaard, among other actual major-league players, in a game against actual major-league players. Holy fuck! When the UFC had CM Punk fight at least they had the decency to put him in against regional-level opposition.
Forget about any of Tebow’s teammates here; surely some of them would get more out of the experience of playing against a real major-league lineup than he would, but they have the misfortune of playing for the Mets and so can expect to get screwed over. Forget Rick Porcello, who will be pitching today for the Boston Red Sox and would get more benefit out of facing a cardboard cutout. Forget the fans—baseball is entertainment, and Tebow hitting is entertaining—and forget the integrity of the game, which will be fine. Instead, just think about this: The Mets are shamelessly promoting a silly farce just to have their brand associated with that of a famous football player who’s most famous for being unspeakably terrible at football (and appears to derive some perverse sense of satisfaction out of being humiliated by competent athletes). We’re shit, the Mets are saying. Associate us with failure. That’s not how this is supposed to work! The Mets should get Kevin Costner in there if they just have to have a random celebrity at DH—at least he’d know he was play-acting, and he’d look better doing it.