David Wright: Tim Tebow Is the Most Famous Baseball Player Right Now

The thing is, he might be right.

It’s no secret that baseball has a star problem. In an ESPN poll of almost 18,000 American sports fans conducted in 2016, there were no active major league players among the top 50 favorite athletes. There was, however, one minor league player: Tim Tebow.

Tebow is not only easily the most recognizable face in Mets camp this spring, if you ask captain David Wright, he’s the most famous baseball player in the world right now. 

“In my opinion, not just because of what he does in a baseball uniform,” Wright told NorthJersey.com, “but I think he’s the most famous person to wear a professional baseball uniform now.”

The thing is, he’s probably not wrong. Baseball obviously isn’t Tebow’s primary claim to fame— he only has 126 games of Class A ball under his belt—but he also appears as a football analyst on SEC Network and had a regular gig on Good Morning America. You can’t say the same about Bryce Harper, Mike Trout or Kris Bryant. If you go by Google Trends data, only Aaron Judge consistently draws more search interest than Tebow. 

But Tebow seems to try his best to be like any minor leaguer. NorthJersey.com’s Matt Ehalt has a story about what it’s like to be Tebow’s teammate in the low minors. Sure, they like to pick his brain about football but he doesn’t expect any celebrity treatment. 

“I didn’t think he had that rockstar mentality. He rode the bus like the rest of us,” St. Lucie teammate Peter Alonso told Ehalt. “He wasn’t chartering planes across the state or anything. Being Tim Tebow, he’s probably the most famous minor league baseball player but he was like a normal teammate.”