With Tebow on roster,
Fireflies glow brighter
Athlete, cultural icon ready to take
the South Atlantic League by storm
By
Benjamin Hill / MiLB.com
It's
Tebow time in the South Atlantic League.
The
New York Mets announced Monday that
Tim Tebow will begin his professional baseball career with their Class A
affiliate, the Columbia
Fireflies. Tebow is not a typical Minor Leaguer, of course, as
typical Minor Leaguers aren't 29-year-old evangelical Heisman Trophy-winning
quarterbacks with NFL experience and an international following. This is a man
who has cultivated a massive, devout fan base, as well as a contingent of
seemingly ever-present detractors.
In
short, everything Tim Tebow does is news. And now the Fireflies -- and the
entirety of the South Atlantic League -- are a big part of the story.
Tebow
will be the most high-profile Minor Leaguer since 1994, when Michael Jordan
(temporarily) retired from the NBA, signed with the White Sox and spent the
season with the Double-A Birmingham
Barons.
John
Katz was among the sprawling cast of characters during Jordan's memorable run
through the Southern League; in 1994 he served as media relations coordinator
for the circuit's Carolina Mudcats
franchise. Now, as Columbia Fireflies president, he's playing a direct role in
facilitating Tebow's Minor League experience.
"It's
been a whirlwind," said Katz, speaking in Columbia shortly after returning
from a trip to the Mets' Spring Training home of Port St. Lucie,
Florida. "To the extent that we've been able to prepare for
it, we've prepared for it. I spent time with Timmy [Wednesday] morning. The guy
gets it -- he knows he's nine or 10 years behind other kids. But you look at
the smile on his face, you know he wants to be here, and from that standpoint
it's exciting…. I hate to sound cliché, but it's a blessing for us to be a part
of it."
Tebow's
presence will certainly be a blessing at the gate. The Fireflies have recently
experienced what Katz, perhaps understatedly, refers to as a "noticeable
uptick" in ticket sales. There has also been a noticeable uptick in the
sale of Fireflies merchandise, whose apparel line now includes Tebow T-shirts.
"The
impressions globally have been phenomenal," said Katz.
The
Fireflies open their season at home on April 6, kicking off their second year
at Spirit Communications Park after relocating from Savannah, Georgia. Savannah's
Grayson Stadium, the Mets' previous Class A locale and Katz's
former place of employment, opened in 1926 and would have been a logistical
nightmare in terms of handling the crush of fans and media that Tebow will
bring.
"One
of the byproducts of moving into a new park is the amount of people [on staff]
that we have," said Katz. "Community relations. Social media. I feel
like now, more than any time in my career, we're best equipped to handle
something like this. We have the right people to make the experience great. We
can let Timmy be a ballplayer, to go through the process and hopefully make his
way to the big leagues. And to do that while understanding that there are 24
other guys [on the Fireflies roster] going through the same thing.
Understanding that balance is going to be important."
Tebow
on Tour: Coming to a ballpark near you?
Making
a Minor League schedule is never easy, but it's particularly difficult in the
Sally League. The circuit stretches as far north as Lakewood, New Jersey, and
as far south as Charleston, South Carolina. Only one team -- the Greensboro
Grasshoppers -- is located less than 500 miles from all the other teams. (This
is an important number in Minor League Baseball as teams are prohibited from
traveling more than 500 miles by bus at a single stretch.) The ramifications of
the SAL's sprawling footprint are evident in its schedule, which is created via
supercomputer by a team of Johns Hopkins University researchers
and students. Variables such as the even distribution of weekend home dates are
given higher priority than every team playing at least one home and away series
against each other.
All
of this is to say, three teams -- the West Virginia
Power, Asheville
Tourists and Greensboro
Grasshoppers -- won't host the Fireflies at all this
season. The remaining 10 teams are now preparing for brief bursts of
Tebowmania, marketing his appearance while including some variation of an
essential caveat that can be paraphrased as "Hey, this is Minor League
Baseball. Tebow might get promoted, demoted, injured, released or retire. But
we sure hope he'll be with the team when the Fireflies come to town."
After
the Fireflies open at home (on MiLB.TV),
they'll travel to Augusta, Georgia, for the GreenJackets'
home opener. Augusta general manager Tom Denlinger said Tebow's possible
appearance is "catching the CSRA [Central Savannah River Area] by
storm." "Got Tebow?" reads the team's social media imagery,
above a photo of the smiling erstwhile quarterback.
From
Augusta, the Fireflies are on to Rome, Georgia,
where the Braves have taken a conservative approach and simply mentioned that
"Tim Tebow is tentatively scheduled to play." The Hickory Crawdads
are next up on the road trip docket, with Columbia in town from April 27-30.
General manager Mark Seaman reported that tickets sales for the four-game set
are "300 to 400 percent higher than usual."
The
Fireflies visit the Delmarva
Shorebirds from May 10-12. General manager Chris Bitters said
online ticket sales have been "very robust" this week, and that on
May 10 Tebowmania will collide with "Mascot Mania" when a couple
dozen costumed characters (give or take) visit the ballpark to celebrate
Sherman the bird's 22nd birthday. Bitters added the standard disclaimer
that Tebow "may or may not" be on the roster but said "fans will
have a great time at the Shorebirds game regardless."
From
Delmarva it's on to the Lakewood
BlueClaws. The team put these May 13-16 games on sale Tuesday,
in advance of when they otherwise would have been made available to the public.
Director of communications Greg Giombarrese said reserved seats for May 13's
game -- a Bark in the Park promo in which dogs are admitted -- are nearly sold
out, and that Tuesday yielded the most traffic to the team's website of any day
this offseason.
The
Fireflies make it to Lexington on May 28, and the Legends
will be ready. To "capitalize on the hysteria," the team is offering
a "Ten Tebow" ticket package for all 10 games (over three series) in
which the Fireflies will be in town.
Legends
creative director Ty Cobb (yes, that is his real
name) said "the last time Tim Tebow played a game in
Lexington, it was an SEC football match-up and he left the field on a cart
after taking a vicious hit from a University of Kentucky defensive end. Now
he'll return with a baseball bat and glove…. You never know if or when you'll
ever have an opportunity even remotely close to it again."
From
June 1-4, Columbia will take on the Hagerstown Suns.
The Suns' Facebook post promoting Tebow's potential visit became what GM Travis
Painter called "our widest-reaching media post of all time, reaching over
35,000 people…. We have sold about 1,200 tickets over the four-day span."
The
Greenville Drive host the Fireflies from June 13-15.
From there its 213 miles south to Charleston,
where RiverDogs GM Dave Echols points out that, coincidentally, the team will
have a pre-game church service on June 18. Perhaps the famously religious Tebow
will attend?
Finally,
there's the Kannapolis
Intimidators, who first welcome the Fireflies from July 22-25.
Director of communications Josh Feldman points out that a Heisman winner
playing in Kannapolis has precedence -- Ricky Williams suited up for the
Piedmont Boll Weevils in 1996 and 1997. (And let's not forget Chris Weinke,
1992 Myrtle Beach Hurricane turned 2000 Heisman Trophy winner.)
Feldman,
clicking through the team's recent online ticket orders, said 16 of the past 17
had been for one of the games in which Tebow might be in town (emphasis on
"might"). Seconds later, he paused.
"We
just got another one," he said. "And, yeah, it's also a Tebow
game."
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