What are Tim Tebow's chances of making it in baseball?

Former NFL quarterback-type-thing and human hot take Tim Tebow is plotting a foray into baseball. Tebow, who will soon turn 29, will hold a workout for all 30 MLB teams later this month.

We are most certainly rooting for Tebow to make it as a ballplayer, and though it seems far-fetched, he did hit .494 and earn first-team all-state honors in Florida as a high-school junior. His old coach told the Sporting News that Tebow once hit a 489-foot homer in batting practice. That sounds ludicrous, but then Tebow was athletic enough to play quarterback in the NFL without being able to throw.

Tebow's big, strong and fast, and there's no down he owns a physique to make baseball scouts drool. But playing baseball professionally is really, really hard, and hitting a pro breaking ball represents the type of skill that normally requires years of refinement. So here's our best effort at setting odds on Tebow's long-shot baseball career:

1. He gets signed by an MLB team: 1-to-2

Says here it's better than even money some team takes a chance on Tebow. No front office in baseball would be foolish enough to think it likely Tebow someday helps them at the big-league level, and a lot of GMs would presumably be turned away by the hordes of media and distraction that will come along with a celebrity of Tebow's caliber joining their teams in spring training.

But minor-league contracts are tiny investments for MLB clubs, and some of the same things that turn Tebow off to some GMs will appeal to others. Some teams want the attention, and Tebow hardly seems like a guy who's about to generate a lot of bad press for your club. Even if he's abjectly terrible and obviously has no business competing with pro baseball players, you can use him in the outfield late in meaningless spring-training games and get your real players jumpstarted for dealing with the crowd and media noise that they'll face in the regular season.

2. He plays in the minors: 1-to-1

Tebow wouldn't need to show much to merit some playing time in Class A ball. Again, the athleticism implies some upside, and even if it appears there's no way he'll pan out, longer shots have seen time on the field in the low minors.

Put him on a farm team somewhere and you will absolutely thrill your minor-league affiliate when the sellout crowds start pouring in, plus you'll give a bunch of your prospects a chance to see what big-league attention looks like and how a famous pro athlete goes about managing his daily routine. There are a bunch of red-blooded, football-loving American kids in every minor league clubhouse -- many of them from Florida, no less -- and maybe a lot of them would stand to benefit in various ways from playing alongside Tebow.

On the topic: People joke about Michael Jordan's minor-league baseball career, but Michael Jordan's baseball career was incredible. Dude took up a new sport at age 31 and managed to hit over .200 in Class AA ball. Thousands of full-time pro baseball players never do that. It's almost as if Jordan was the greatest athlete any of us has ever seen.

3. He's a decent minor-league player: 50-to-1

50-to-1 might actually be generous. Minor-league regulars are still some of the best and most promising baseball players in the world, and there just aren't a lot of stories of 29-year-old dudes returning from 12-year layoffs to find success on the baseball field. I get that Tebow was very good in high school, but so was literally everyone in the minors and most of them never stopped playing.

It makes for an interesting hypothetical, at least. At 29, Tebow should be in the thick of his baseball prime, but he hasn't played baseball in more than a decade. Are the improvements in athleticism and coordination that come with adulthood enough to overwhelm the complete absence of practice reps?

I'm moved to say no, but then, consider the case of Josh Hamilton. Hamilton was undoubtedly a much better baseball prospect than Tebow, plus he played parts of four seasons in the minors before his addiction got the best of him and forced him to the sidelines. Hamilton spent nearly four full seasons not playing baseball, then picked back up in 2007 and played about exactly the way you'd hope a former first-overall pick would be playing at age 27.

So maybe practice is overrated. But Hamilton, again, was a much better player to start with, and he seems more likely an exception than a rule.

He plays in the Majors: 250-to-1

Again, baseball is just so hard. You can point to guys like Bo Jackson, Deion Sanders and Brian Jordan and argue that reaching the highest level in both football and baseball is possible, but none of those guys ever stopped playing baseball for as long as Tebow has. And a slew of other NFL players -- Ricky Williams, Akili Smith, and Chris Weinke among them -- attempted baseball careers and flamed out before reaching the Majors.

Jordan, for the long layoff, makes for a better comp, and Jordan was a bit over his head in Class AA ball. And he was Michael Jordan.

Former NFL runningback D.J. Dozier returned to baseball in 1990 following three seasons with the Vikings, and Dozier did manage to make the Major League Mets in 1992. But Dozier went back to baseball far younger than Tebow did, and his big-league career lasted all of 25 games.

He's a good Major League player: 5,000-to-1

The overwhelming majority of Major League Baseball players are pretty lousy by the standards we hold for Major League Baseball players. So the odds of Tebow somehow proving a good big-league ballplayer someday are extremely long and likely unattainable. But that only means it'll be that much cooler if and when it happens.

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