By: TJ Hartnett

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

Tim Tebow announcing his intent to play Major League Baseball seemed like a joke at first.  Then actual Major League Baseball teams went along with it. Almost all of them showed up to watch him display his talents.

Then one actually signed him. Tim Tebow is now a professional baseball player. It still seems like kind of a joke.

Much like reaction to Tebow’s decision to pursue baseball, reports of what he displayed during his workout varied from impressed to laughable.  However, what he showed that day made enough of an impression on a few teams that signing him was a consideration – apparently the Braves were seriously thinking about it – and for the New York Mets it became a reality.

Tebow inked a contract for the Mets and will go play some minor league ball. As a person who covers and roots for the Braves, I couldn’t be happier with this outcome.

I was embarrassed the Braves seemed so interested in signing him, especially given the position the team is in and will continue to be in for at least another year or two. Maybe if they had come out and declared that they would sign him to be a gate attraction for single A Rome, that would be one thing; but that wouldn’t have been the intent, nor is it for the Mets.

Not that New York is sticking him in triple A and blocking other, more deserving prospects, but the mere idea that Tebow could accrue enough experience to break into the bigs before he’s 32 and already on the decline is amusing in its unlikelihood.

Let’s go ahead and get this out of the way: I expressed to a friend how pleased I was to see Tebow sign someone other than Atlanta and my embarrassment at his consideration by the Braves, he asked if I felt the same way about Michael Jordan retiring from basketball to try his hand at America’s pastime.

A little, was my response. Jordan’s attempt was foolish, though admittedly it’s hard to look at that with the advantage of hindsight and the knowledge that he couldn’t hack it. But there’s a big difference: Michael Jordan was and is the greatest player in the history of his sport, and he was still at the top of his game when he decided to switch sports (as evidenced by the three consecutive championships upon his return to basketball).

Tim Tebow washed out of professional football after three years. The guy is in shape, but that’s a far cry from being a successful professional athlete. He’s also not Deion Sanders or Bo Jackson or even Brian Jordan. Those guys were two sport athletes past their junior year of college.  29-year-old Tim Tebow can make no such claim.

One of the pitchers that threw to him, David Aardsma, said that he was much looser swing in the backfields, and that he gripped the bat much tighter in front of 40 plus talent evaluators.  Well that’s unfortunate, because he’s going to be getting a whole lot more attention than that once he puts on a uniform in the minor leagues.

I must say he’s going to be an excellent ticket salesman, but I am very curious about how he’s going to handle sliders.

Look I’m not saying he won’t surprise the world and turn out to be a pretty decent ballplayer. He’s been a good athlete in the past, maybe one of the best college quarterbacks of all time, and I certainly don’t blame Tebow in the slightest for wanting to play.

More power to him. He even said himself he might fail, but at least he will have tried. Maybe that’s how the Mets feel too. But I’m still glad the Braves missed out on him (and a little intrigued how he’ll be received up north – surely he’d have had a warmer fan base in place in SEC country). No pun intended, I just don’t have a lot of faith that he’ll succeed.