Why Tim Tebow is good for baseball

Former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow has signed a minor league contract with the New York Mets.  Much of the baseball world is skeptical and derisive. But Joel Sherman compares Tebow’s baseball dreams with those of Michael Jordan, who also, after his basketball super-career, tried to make it in baseball.

From Joel Sherman, Tim Tebow is baseball’s chance to make up for Michael Jordan | New York Post:

I remember the pitchforks-and-torches anger in 1994 when Michael Jordan announced he was going to try to play major league baseball.

The “how-dare-he” fury that came with him signing with the White Sox to be shipped to Double-A Birmingham was intense. Who was Jordan to think, at age 31, he could skip all the standard protocols necessary to play the sport at the highest level?

The grander point was missed then. The most popular athlete in the world wanted to play baseball. If he defied all odds and succeeded, great, then the most popular athlete in the world was playing baseball. And if he failed, he a) brought attention to the game; b) used his very loud megaphone to profess his love for the sport to his millions of fans around the world; and c) accentuated just how tough it is to play major league baseball, because the greatest athlete in the world would have failed at it.

From Joel Sherman, Tim Tebow is baseball’s chance to make up for Michael Jordan | New York Post: