Imagining an NL East with Tim Tebow in it

The Phillies’ most hated divisional rival crumbled under the pressure to take on Tim Tebow for a few years, and the Phillies couldn’t be more rattled.

It’s like they’re not even able to think about anything else. That’s probably why they’ve been losing so much lately! This all makes sense now! Thank you, Tim Tebow! Sort of.

The Phillies sent somebody to look at Tebow during his SoCal workout, just like most other teams, but whether it was a low level scout or PHIL the supercomputer, having activated the arms and legs installed in him for increased mobility, we’ll never know. The point is, there was never any indication of which teams were doing due diligence and which ones were sending someone as a cruel joke on a young man trying his hardest. And we certainly didn’t know which team was going to draw the Popsicle stick with Tebow’s smiling face on it out of Rob Manfred’s hand.

But in Philadelphia, we did know Tim Tebow.

Yes, looked at him, throwing a huge leather baseball in a Philadelphia uniform. He lived across the street from the Phillies for a while as an Eagles QB until he was asked not to be a part of the team anymore. In fact, Chip Kelly and the largely unsuccessful football team he directed during his time here are at fault for disrupting the Tim Tebow Baseball Timeline.

"Honestly, it’s been something I’ve been thinking about for a little while and came close to pulling the trigger on last year," Tebow said on Thursday in a conference call. "Actually, when I was in the middle of going through training for baseball, Chip Kelly called. So then I had to figure that out. I was getting ready to go down the baseball road and I had this opportunity with the Eagles."

Wow! When will Chip Kelly’s influence stop touching lives in Philadelphia?! We should just make him the mayor and be done with it!

But hey, if Tebow does somehow scrape together enough of a reason for the Mets to send him to the Arizona Fall League, where he inexplicably leads the Scottsdale Scorpions to the championship, gets unbelievably promoted after a white hot first half in 2017, lingers briefly in triple A Las Vegas where he is simultaneously corrupted by the tempting caress of sin city,  and gets bumped up to the big club as part of a mid-season push, then from then on he’s back here in Philadelphia 19-20 times a year, where Rhys Hoskins can give him the earful he deleted off Twitter the other night for getting a $100,000 signing bonus.

Hell, if Tebow should go to the AFL, which maybe he will, he’ll be playing right alongside six Phillies prospects as a member of the Scorpions, leading them all to that realer-by-the-second AFL championship I mentioned earlier. And who better to set the example that will light a fire in the likes of Scott Kingery, Aaron Brown, and the gang than the man who at five years old was "dumbfounded" by his baseball coach’s suggestion that he just play sports for fun.

Yes, in "Playing with Purpose: Tim Tebow" by Mike Yorkey, we learn not only of Tebow’s first-ever feeling of disgust, but also the level of competitiveness of the Tebow clan in general. According to this harrowing work of non-fiction, the Tebows were bloodthirsty about everything from sports to Monopoly, with everybody but sister Katie ready to "cut your throat" over the outcome.

Doesn’t that sound exactly like the sort of athlete that gets praised in this town for embodying its knife-wielding spirit? Wait, what in god’s name am I advocating for here? Also, how about this author calling five-year-olds "clueless" as if he's never been tricked by one, like everybody else. Right?

The point, I just realized, is this: The Mets, by potentially sending Tebow to Arizona to play and form a bond with the Phillies players against whom he’d possibly battle in the future, may have disrupted yet another timeline, possibly repairing the fracture caused originally by Chip Kelly. Philadelphia, in its attempt to keep Tebow out of baseball by letting him play for the Eagles, put him on a path to be signed by the Mets for six digits, who will accidentally instill Tebow’s ferocious competitiveness in the six Phillies players alongside he will play in the AFL.

Finally. This Tebow thing all makes sense.