PORT ST. LUCIE, FL – FEBRUARY 21: RY 21: RY 21: RY 21: Tim Tebow /
Tim Tebow hit a home run in his first Double-A at-bat, but will he be better than Michael Jordan was in Double-A 24 years ago?
TEBOW!!! The Tim Tebow Experience kicked off the 2018 season in fine fashion on Thursday. He hit a three-run home run his first time up for the Double-A Binghamton Rumble Ponies. It was reminiscent of his first at-bat last year for the Columbia Fireflies when he launched a two-run home run. The guy knows how to make a good first impression.
The Tebow homer was especially surprising after he looked completely overmatched in spring training with the Mets. He was 1-for-18 with 11 strikeouts and just one walk. He also wasn’t particularly effective at the plate last year, when he struck out 26 percent of the time with Class-A Columbia and High-A St. Lucie and slugged .347 with a .309 OBP.
There was plenty of negative reaction to the Tebow home run news on Twitter, which isn’t surprising when it comes to Tebow. He has his supporters and detractors, but the detractors seem more prominent and outwardly hostile to his attempts at playing professional baseball.
There is also a sizeable group that simply doesn’t care and doesn’t want to hear about Tebow. He’s a 30-year-old playing Double-A for the first time. He’s not a prospect. If he didn’t have the Tim Tebow name and background, you wouldn’t be reading about him.
Twenty-four years ago, there was an even more famous athlete from another sport attempting to play professional baseball. Michael Jordan was 31 years old when he played one season of Double-A ball for the Birmingham Barons in 1994. This was during his “break” from the NBA after winning three straight titles with the Chicago Bulls.
A roller-coaster of a ride
Michael Jordan announced his retirement from the NBA just a couple months after his father had been found murdered in August of 1993. At the time, he said, “If you ride a roller coaster for nine years, don’t you want to ride something else? That’s the way I feel right now – I want to ride something else.” He signed a minor league contract with the Chicago White Sox in February of 1994 and was assigned to the Barons in the Southern League.
There has been speculation over the last 20-plus years that Jordan’s retirement from basketball was a secret suspension by the NBA. He was known to be a prolific gambler, and the belief by some is that his gambling caught up to him. The conspiracy theory suggests that NBA commissioner David Stern gave him a choice: he could voluntarily retire, or he’d be suspended. For PR purposes, it was best for Jordan and the NBA if he retired and kept his reputation intact, which is what Jordan did.
Not everyone believes that conspiracy theory to be true. Ron Shelton, the director of an ESPN “30 for 30” documentary about Jordan’s year playing baseball, told the Chicago Tribune that the gambling conspiracy theory was nonsense. He points out that Jordan’s father had played baseball and hoped Jordan would play baseball. When his father died, Jordan chose to honor his father by trying to make it in the sport his father loved.
Whatever the truth, Jordan was the right fielder for the Barons in 1994, playing for future World Series-winning manager Terry Francona. That team had some past and future major league players, including Steve Sax and Dan Pasqua at the tail end of their careers and a young pitcher named Steve Gajkowski, who led the team in wins and would make it to the major leagues four years later (and who was a teammate of mine in college).
Before the Double-A season started, Jordan played in an exhibition game between the White Sox and Cubs at Wrigley Field. He played right field and batted sixth, between Robin Ventura and Ron Karkovice. He handled himself fine in the field. At the dish, he banged out two hits and had two RBI. His interview with Harry Caray before the game is a great clip of one legend talking to another.
Tim Tebow and Michael Jordan ride the bus
With the Barons, Michael Jordan was second on the team in plate appearances but his .202/.289/.266 batting line was not the stuff of legends. He only hit three home runs, which means Tim Tebow is one-third of the way to Jordan’s home run total after just one game. To be fair, Jordan did steal 30 bases, second-most on the team, and he had a higher walk rate than the team as a whole, despite his six-foot-six frame.
When you think about a 31-year-old man who had devoted most of his life to basketball and hadn’t played baseball since high school, you have to be impressed at what Jordan accomplished. Double-A is the level that separates players from prospects.
There have been plenty of A ballplayers who couldn’t take the next step. Jordan never even played A ball, like Tebow did last year. He stepped right into a level just two steps below the major leagues.
His three home runs don’t look like much, but the team leader only had seven and the team as a whole hit 40, by far the lowest total in the Southern League. Perhaps the team’s home ballpark was unfriendly to power hitters. Early in the season, Jordan had a 13-game hitting streak during which he hit .378 (17-for-45). He also had seven game-winning RBI, which was a thing back then.
Jordan didn’t set the league on fire, but he was likely much much better than an average Joe walking down the street who hadn’t played baseball in 13 years. I’d guess many 31-year-olds who hadn’t played baseball in a decade couldn’t even catch a fly ball, let alone get a hit 20 percent of the time. It will be interesting to see if Tebow can top him.
They look like very different players, not just in physique but also in style of play. Jordan stole 30 bases. Tebow stole only two bases last season. It looks like Tebow has more power, but he’s playing in a different era.
We’ll have to see what Tim Tebow does next and how the season plays out. For all his detractors, it’s important to remember just how hard it is to do what Tebow is trying to do. Michael Jordan was better than people remember, considering his circumstances. Perhaps Tebow will also be.
