Tim Tebow talks baseball, faith and facing life's challenges
Todd Piro catches up with superstar athlete Tim Tebow at Spring Training with the New York Mets.
Tim Tebow hit his first home run Sunday in the top rung of minor league baseball for the Syracuse Mets after struggling to find his stroke at the start of the season.
The former NFL quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner had just 10 hits and was batting .130 with 32 strikeouts in his first 23 games. Although a recent surge of hits in six of seven games boosted the average to .158, he was still last in the league.
But on Sunday Tebow seemed to finally turn the page.
He drove the ball over the right-field wall in the third inning against the Columbus Clippers — his very first Triple-A homer for the New York Met's minor league affiliate. He returned to the dugout and received the silent treatment — as per tradition — from his teammates before eventually getting high-fives and congratulations.
David Thomspon immediately followed Tebow with another home run, but the two runs weren’t enough to overcome the Clippers, who won 8-2.
The 6-foot-3, 245-pound Tebow has struggled since his promotion from Double-A, where he batted .273 with six home runs, 108 total bases, and 36 RBIs in 271 at-bats over 84 games for Binghamton of the Eastern League before a season-ending injury to his hand.
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"Double-A pitching is a lot of younger guys that have good velocity on the fastball but no secondary pitches," Syracuse Mets manager Tony DeFrancesco said last week. "Here, Tim is seeing everything coming at him but the kitchen sink. They're throwing fastballs hard in on him, they're breaking balls, they're elevating. He just hasn't seen enough of that right now — and they're throwing strikes."
Tebow hit his first Triple-A home run after struggling with the lowest batting average in the league.
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But Tebow hasn’t let his shaky start get in the way of his focus and drive to find his form.
"I don't necessarily set goals," Tebow said last week. "For me, it's just being able to really go back and look every day at the film and know that I'm improving and constantly stay kind on that progression plan where I feel like every day, every week, every month, I'm improving. I feel like I've done that so far."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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