clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

The Royals may have offered Tim Tebow a contract

They could be planning on running the wishbone next year.

Jared Wickerham/Getty Images

Tim Tebow had his workout Tuesday afternoon in front of a crowd of over 40 scouts, representing 28 MLB teams, including the Royals. And at least according to ESPN football analyst Marcellus Wiley, Tebow has already gotten an offer from the Royals.

Bob Fescoe of 610 KCSP says otherwise, however.

The workout went just fine, as he faced live batting practice from former Major League relievers David Aardsma and Chad Smith. His talent left a wide variety of opinions.

Where's Tim Tebow's hype man?

Ah yes.

What does Lorenzo Cain think of Tim Tebow's chances of returning to baseball at age 29 for the first time since high school?

"It’s going to be a tough grind for him because baseball is definitely a tough sport — something that you can’t just pick up after not playing for I don’t know how many years," Cain said. "It’s going to be a tough transition for him, but we all know he’s an athlete. I guess we’ll see what happens with that."

The Royals are no stranger to being interested in football players. They drafted future NFL pros Archie Manning, Steve Bartkowski, Dan Marino, John Elway, and Deion Sanders, and of course, famously drafted and signed Heisman Trophy winner Bo Jackson, who became an All-Star outfielder for them. More recently they took a gamble on former West Virginia quarterback Pat White and drafted Nebraska football recruit Bubba Starling in the first round.

The Royals are also big on clubhouse character and players with strong faith, which Tebow would grade as 80. It is fairly unprecedented for an athlete to pick up the game at a professional level after this much time off,  but D.J. Dozier and Brian Jordan both played professional baseball after short NFL careers, and NBA star Michael Jordan hit .200 in AA ball at the age of 31 after not playing since high school.

It seems like this is a harmless publicity stunt, but if Tebow is serious, who knows? At the very worst, Tebow causes a bit of a distraction to some minor league team in the Royals system, and costs some other player a job. At best, the Royals can refine his pure athleticism the way they did with the old Royals Academy, which took a raw football player named UL Washington, and turned him into their starting shortstop for several years. Small market teams like the Royals need to be a bit creative finding talent, and Tim Tebow may just be a risk worth taking.