(Photo by Doug Murray/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Tim Tebow was bound to have a standout baseball moment during his season in the minor leagues, right?

Thursday night in Port St. Lucie, the former Heisman Trophy winner, NFL quarterback and current ESPN analyst (for the SEC Network) gave the home fans some excitement to end the evening. Batting as the designated hitter, Tebow hit an opposite field home run to give the St. Lucie Mets a 5-4 walkoff victory over the Daytona Tortugas in a seven-inning game. (The teams played a doubleheader on Thursday.)

Facing an 0-1 count, Tebow, 29, launched a fastball from Daytona’s Austin Orewiler down the left-field line to give his team the victory. As you might expect, many in the crowd had their phones out, hoping for some magic from Tebow and he didn’t disappoint. Footage of the home run popped up on Twitter almost immediately.

According to Tebow, it was the first walkoff homer he hit since his junior year of high school, which gave his Nease High School team the district championship. (Tebow didn’t play baseball his senior year, choosing to concentrate on football.)

Plenty of people are skeptical about Tebow playing in the Mets’ minor-league system, since there’s little chance of him making it to the majors. But he’s advanced from low-Class A to advanced A-ball (whether he deserved to or not), and has arguably responded to the challenge. Maybe playing in Florida, wearing blue and orange, has put Tebow in a comfort zone.

With Thursday’s walkoff homer, Tebow has now gotten a hit in 11 straight games for St. Lucie. In 16 games (yeah, yeah — small sample size), he’s batted .327/.421/.551 with three home runs (all of which have gone to the opposite field) and 10 RBI. That’s the same number of homers he compiled in 64 games with Class A Columbia. Perhaps opposing pitchers are still challenging Tebow, wanting to see if he can hit their good stuff. So far, Tebow has shown he can.

About Ian Casselberry

Ian is a writer, editor, and podcaster. You can find his work at Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He's written for Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, MLive, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation.

3 thoughts on “You gotta believe? Tim Tebow hits walkoff homer for St. Lucie Mets

  1. Tim Tebow will never play in the Majors other than September call-up publicity stunt. I don’t care what he is doing in A ball.

  2. Just a theory here, but one reason Tebow may be hitting better in Florida are the lights in Port St. Lucie. Stadiums that host spring training games have major league standard lights, while low minor league stadiums like the one in South Carolina has, well, minor league lighting. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t see Tebow earning his way to the majors and the only reason any club would sign a 29 year old guy who hasn’t picked up a bat in 11 years to a contract is if his name was Tebow. That said, I’m glad he is not embarrassing himself. Who knows? Maybe he has some talent after all?

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