What Tim Tebow’s retirement from baseball can teach us all

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Tim Tebow announced his retirement on Wednesday from baseball and the New York Mets.

His chances of making it to the majors, starting at age 28 after not picking up a bat in years, was always a long shot. Tebow finishes his baseball career with a .223 batting average and 18 home runs in his four seasons of minor league play. While he did hit .273 at AA Binghamton in 2018, his career best OPS of .734 that year was just barely above league average. That’s pretty underwhelming.

But it’s also a significant accomplishment for someone who was seen by many as a joke when he announced he was going to give baseball a try.

While many point to Tebow’s open expression of his faith as the reason for his popularity, I have my doubts. There are lots of players who openly express their Christianity. And those players don’t receive nearly the same vitriol or deification as Tebow.

Many would point to his work with charities and his foundation. Undoubtedly, it has been pretty amazing to see the reaction to the Tim Tebow Night to Shine event and how it has grown. Long after the cameras were turned off, Tebow would stay to play catch with disabled kids or visit kids in a hospital. But again – and this in no way diminishes the good works that he is doing – lots of college and professional athletes do many of the same things.

With his retirement from baseball again making major headlines, I thought back to the Tim Tebow experience while he was at Florida and this play is the one that stood out to me.

This play is the same game against LSU as the famous jump pass to Tate Casey that gets replayed over and over. But I was in the stands that day and remember this being the moment when I knew Urban Meyer’s spread offense would work in the SEC.

I didn’t think that because the play worked. It was because I’d never seen that type of play before and unlike the jump pass, it wasn’t a gimmick down at the goal line. Nobody was within 20 yards of receiver Louis Murphy.

And the trend of doing things I’ve never seen before continued into the NFL. Again, the play most people remember is the long pass to Demarious Thomas against Pittsburgh to win a playoff game. But I’ve seen short slants taken to the house before.

Instead, the thing I remember most about that season is the game against the Bears that the Broncos had no business winning. When Marion Barber fumbled the ball in overtime to give the Broncos a chance to win the game, Tebow’s response was to calmly stand up while continuing to sing worship music.

Or how about the game against the Jets on a nationally televised Thursday night game? The Broncos offense did nothing the entire game. Tebow did nothing the entire game. Then, with the game on the line, Tebow ripped off a 95-yard drive accounting for 92 of those yards. It was all read-option plays. The kind of offense that ESPN analyst Merrill Hodge insisted would not work in the National Football League.

And that – I think – is the root of Tebow’s popularity.

He doesn’t do things the way they traditionally work. He challenges the idea that experts’ opinions are always right. And he doesn’t always do things well, but what he does do is approach things in a way where regardless of the outcome, it is going to be approached with discipline and 100 percent effort.

That’s why it makes sense that Tebow’s retirement statement from baseball cites an inability to give 100 percent and being called in other directions. He just isn’t wired to do something half-way.

In her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Australian palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware was exposed to many people in their final days and the book describes the regrets that they expressed to her before they passed.

The number one regret? “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

Most of us want to say that about ourselves. Most of us can’t though.

We float through life talking about how we “could have made it” if we had worked harder on the field or in school. We talk about the idea we had that deep down we didn’t have the stones to pursue or taking the risk that would have changed our lives and the lives of others. We talk about the charity work we’ll do someday or how we would fix a particular system if we were in charge.

But that’s really all it is…..talk.

You can say a lot of things about Tebow, but one thing you have to admit is that he has never been just talk. He has forged his own path, first at Nease High School, then on his way to the Heisman Trophy at Florida, then with the Broncos and then in the Mets minor league system.

I have no doubt he’ll do that with whatever he pursues next.

He’s never been afraid of putting in hard work. He’s always had the discipline to make sure he’s 100 percent in. And he is determined that when it’s his time to go, he’s never going to have to say he didn’t live the life that God intended for him.

I think that those who admire Tebow admire him because of that very quality. Conversely, I think those who loathe Tebow loathe him because of that very quality as well. Seeing someone so confident in the path of their life and willing to put in the work required to give it a true try is an ugly juxtaposition for most of us when we compare that to how we’ve lived our own lives.

Tebow reminds us all of what is possible. But he also reminds us that we’re all given a choice. Some of us choose to get off of our butts and actually do what God designed us to do.

Others just choose to talk.

Fostering Hope

I have close friends who have become advocates for the foster care system in Pennsylvania. They’ve opened up their homes to kids who’ve arrived at their doorstep with nothing but trash bags containing a few of their belongings, scarred by parents either unable or unwilling to properly care for them.

That experience has led them to found Fostering Hope, a non-profit 501C-3 organization dedicated to making sure all foster children in Southeastern Pennsylvania have the basic necessities that they need when they enter a new home.

For more information, or to support what God has designed them to do, please visit www.fosteringhopepa.com.

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