Tim Tebow Almost Drafted by LA Angels Back In 2005, Says Baseball Scout
Tebowmania has engulfed over the NFL ever since Tim Tebow took the helm of the Denver Broncos in 2011, leading the team to a playoff win during his first years as a full-time starter. Ever since, Tebow has been the most controversial topic around the water cooler for NFL enthusiasts, but new reports show that almost never happened.
What most people aren't aware of is that Tebow was a phenomenal baseball player back in high school. During his junior year of high school, the former left fielder hit a staggering .494 for his team and was generating considerable interest from major league teams, most notably, the Los Angeles Angels.
"He had a strong arm and had a lot of power. If he would have been there his senior year he definitely would have had a good chance to be drafted. He had leverage to his swing. He had some natural loft. He had some good power. He was a good athlete. He had had enough arm for that position. He was a left-handed hitter with strength and some size," said Red Sox Florida scout Stephen Hargett.
So what happened? Well, Tebow decided to not pursue baseball his senior year of high school, and instead focused solely on his blossoming football career. Despite that decision, the Angels were reportedly still interested in drafting him even though he was out of the game for a whole year.
"We wanted to draft him," said Tom Kotchman, a former scout for the Angels, "but he never sent back his information card. Either it never got to him, or ... It's Tim Tebow. Who knows if it got to him, and if it did we just never got it back. Otherwise we were going to take him."
The information card is a player's declared interest in becoming drafted and is essentially a questionnaire that teams use to gauge a player's commitment to the sport. Without that bit of information, the Angels could not even put Tebow on their draft board in 2005, and so they decided against pursuing him.
That decision not to play baseball seemed to work out fairly well for Tebow at first. He absolutely dominated the world of college football at Florida, where he won two national championships and a Heisman trophy. In the pros, however, he has not seen nearly the same amount of success.
After his aforementioned stint with the Broncos, Tebow was traded to the Jets but was never able to gain the confidence of the coaching staff there and was let go after this past season. He is now lacing up for the New England Patriots as a backup QB, but should that not pan out, Fenway Park is a stone's (or perhaps baseball's) throw from Foxboro Stadium.
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