Until Friday night, the last time Tim Tebow suited up for a sporting event in New England was when he wore a navy blue No. 5 jersey and threw a pair of touchdown passes to lead the New England Patriots to a come-from-behind 28-20 victory over the New York Giants in a preseason football game in late August 2013.

That performance wasn’t enough to keep the Heisman Trophy winner and former first-round draft pick of the Denver Broncos in the National Football League. The Patriots cut Tebow the following day, opting to retain Ryan Mallett as Tom Brady’s backup at quarterback.

“No, it wasn’t very long, thanks for rubbing that in,” Tebow said with a laugh Friday afternoon when asked about his brief stint with the Patriots. “It was fun. It was a great learning opportunity, being able to learn from a guy like Tommy B and Coach Belichick and Josh McDaniels, who I had known for a long time before that.”

McDaniels, New England’s offensive coordinator, was head coach in Denver when the Broncos drafted Tebow 25th overall in 2010 after he had twice led Florida to national titles. Tebow lasted two seasons in Denver that included a wild-card overtime victory over the Steelers before signing with the Jets for one season, during which he threw only eight passes.

Unable to stick in the NFL, Tebow became a college football analyst until deciding to return to baseball for the first time since he batted .448 as a junior for Nease High School, just outside of Jacksonville, Florida. The Mets gave him a $100,000 bonus in September 2016 and sent him to Instructional League.

“When I first saw him, he was trying to muscle everything,” said his first manager, Valentino Pascucci. “That’s a hard thing to do.”

Pascucci now serves as hitting coach for the Binghamton Rumble Ponies, for whom Tebow wears No. 15 and patrols left field. As he did in his first at-bat in both Instructional League in 2016 and Class A last spring, Tebow homered in his Double-A debut last week, a three-run blast on the first pitch from Sea Dogs right-hander Teddy Stankiewicz.

Nobody ever said Tebow lacks a flair for the dramatic.

As a 30-year-old reaching Double-A for the first time, however, he’s an unlikely prospect for the big leagues. He split time between low Class A Columbia and high Class A St. Lucie last year, batting .226 with eight home runs in 126 games.

In spring training last month, he went 1 for 18 with 11 strikeouts. Friday night at Hadlock, he was 1 for 4 – striking out looking and grounding into a double play against rehabbing Drew Pomeranz, getting thrown out trying to stretch a single off lefty Trey Ball in the seventh and fanning a second time to end the game against side-arming right-hander Trevor Kelley – to raise his average to .182 (4 for 21) with a team-high 11 whiffs. Then again, the Rumble Ponies are batting .182 as a team and the Sea Dogs just reached .200, so Tebow isn’t the only hitter struggling in the cold.

“I think I’m improving,” Tebow told perhaps a dozen media folks gathered outside the visiting dugout before batting practice. “It’s not just about the game and the results, it’s about every little thing that I’m working on, from baserunning to fielding to fundamentals to everything with my swing. It’s just a constant process that we’re working every day to improve on.”

Tebow addressed a variety of topics in a 10-minute session announced as his last of the series.

n Former Florida football coach Steve Spurrier called and extended an invitation to return to pro football as his quarterback for a proposed new league next spring. “He said he’d love to coach me,” Tebow said. “I told him I’m happy doing this baseball thing right now.”

n There’s no timetable on his baseball career. “I’m doing something I love, pursuing it with a lot of passion and desire, and we’ll see what happens.”

n On his reaction to two deeply religious ex-quarterbacks known for taking a knee, Tebow as a gesture of his faith, Colin Kaepernick to protest police violence against black people: “I haven’t read or kept up with everything that’s going on lately,” Tebow said. “But he’s someone that I think truly cared about what he was doing and has taken some heat for it. When you stand for something, that’s what’s going to happen.”

The Sea Dogs did not test Tebow’s arm in left field. He made solid contact on the single, an opposite-field line drive inside the third-base line.

“He’s getting better at it all the time,” said Pascucci. “He’s got a little more direction to his swing, he’s shorter to the ball and he’s doing a really good job of being selective, not chasing too much off-speed. The more at-bats you can get him, the better he’s going to be.”

Glenn Jordan can be contacted at 791-6425 or:

Gjordan@pressherald.com

Twitter: GlennJordanPPH

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