Lindsay lives unique experience: Playing with Tebow

Each day, Desmond Lindsay jogs out of the dugout and into center field at Spirit Communications Park in Columbia, S.C., Whitaker Bank Ballpark in Lexington, Ky., or any of the other 12 South Atlantic League stadiums to continue his education at one of the hardest positions in his sport.

The position has its physical demands — it’s a lot of ground to cover roaming the middle of the outfield field — and has its nuances. As the center fielder for Class A Columbia, Lindsay is the captain of Fireflies’ outfield. He helps manage alignments and has the responsibility to call off the right or left fielder when pursuing fly balls. He has to be vocal and assertive.

Sometimes this means shouting instructions at Tim Tebow.

“It’s been fun,” Lindsay said. “He’s honestly just a good guy to have around the team.”

Although he’s a Bradenton native and Out-of-Door Academy alumnus, Lindsay didn’t have any particular connection to Tebow. He didn’t grow up a Gators fan, and he had signed to play with North Carolina before the Mets took him in the second round of the 2015 MLB draft. Lindsay was never a football player at Out-of-Door even though former Thunder head coach Brett Timmons lobbied him to try his athleticism on the gridiron.

But he knew plenty about Tebow, whose endeavor to play professional baseball has been one of the sport’s subplots this season, even as the Heisman Trophy winner has plodded along with a batting average in the low .200s, an on-base percentage fighting to stay over .300 and a slugging percentage that hasn’t been much better. Like Lindsay, Tebow’s rise to prominence began in Florida where he was a standout high school football player in Ponte Vedra. Improbably, it has brought both to New York’s SAL team in South Carolina.

The common criticism of Tebow this summer has been to treat his time with Columbia as a publicity stunt. The 29-year-old hadn’t played organized baseball since he was a junior at Nease High School in 2005 until he debuted with the Scottsdale Scorpions in the Arizona Fall League last year. To teammates like Lindsay, though, Tebow is more mentor than sideshow.

“He just has more life experience, in a sense,” Lindsay said. “It’s kind of the same thing when you’re talking to somebody in the big leagues who’s been playing for 10 years.”

Tebow is more than seven years older than the average position player in the league and what he lacks in baseball knowledge he makes up for with NFL experience. It’s not exactly the same, but a life in pro sports at the highest level doesn’t usually lead players back to one of the lowest tiers of the minors.

“Obviously, we all know how to play baseball, but they know kind of the mental side of sports to be consistent every day,” Lindsay said. “He helps us out with that sort of stuff, just kind of staying focused.”

The sideshow atmosphere that has come along with Tebow hasn’t fazed Lindsay much either.

Tebow isn’t necessarily a vocal leader for the Fireflies — he doesn’t give the same rousing speeches he was known for at Florida. Media attention has centered more on Tebow and uncovering the reason he wanted to try a sport he’d been away from for more than a decade.

Even the crowds don’t feel noticeably bigger.

“It's big crowds for low-A, but it's still 5,000-6,000 people. When you're in that number — 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 — it's not too big of a difference,” Lindsay said. “I obviously notice that we have more people, but I don't notice it as far as it bothering me.”

Lindsay said he has more important things to worry about, such as figuring out how to get his batting average back on track after a slow start sent him down below .150. In his past five games entering Wednesday, he is 7 for 17 with two homers and five RBIs.

“For me it was watching old videos of me hitting and getting where I was going last year and in previous years,” Lindsay told The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C. on Tuesday. “I just wanted to kind of back track and get where I was comfortable at the plate and it has worked.”

He had the game-winning hit in Tuesday’s night’s game against Lexington.

“It was a little frustrating for him to start the year because it is a kid who had never had failure in his career,” Columbia manager Jose Leger said. “But we just tried to be positive with him and tell him to trust the process and it will take care of itself.”

This story was originally published June 7, 2017 at 5:50 PM with the headline "Lindsay lives unique experience: Playing with Tebow."