NEW YORK — Having flopped with the New York Jets, Tim Tebow will try to revive his career as an outfielder with the New York Mets.

Four years removed from his last regular-season snap as an NFL quarterback, the 29-year-old agreed Thursday to a minor league contract with the Mets that includes a $100,000 signing bonus.

He will report Sept. 18 to the Instructional League in Port St. Lucie, Florida, and test his baseball skills for three weeks against players just months removed from high school and college.

The Mets then will decide whether he goes to the Arizona Fall League, a winter league or gets personal tutoring to prepare for spring training.

Bo Jackson, Deion Sanders and Brian Jordan are the only significant players to have extensive careers in both Major League Baseball and the NFL during the past three decades.

“We don’t have to listen to what everybody else wants us to do with our lives,” Tebow said during a telephone conference call. “We get to do what we want.”

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Tebow will be allowed to leave the instructional league for his job as an analyst for the SEC Network, then return.

“I’m not worried about it, practically speaking,” Mets General Manager Sandy Alderson said. “Perception is something different.”

The amount of Tebow’s signing bonus – the maximum before the Mets could incur a tax under baseball’s labor contract – was obtained by The Associated Press from a person familiar with the deal who spoke on condition of anonymity because the figure was not announced.

“We’re mindful of the fact that at age 29 Tim is starting this endeavor and there is a certain amount of realism that we have to accept,” Alderson said.

Asked last month whether the Mets were interested, Alderson responded: “Are you insinuating we need a Hail Mary at this point?”

But he changed his mind after Tebow worked out for scouts on Aug. 30.

“While I and the organization I think are mindful of the novel nature of this situation, this decision was strictly driven by baseball,” Alderson said. “This was not something that was driven by marketing considerations or anything of the sort. We are extremely intrigued with the potential that Tim has. He has demonstrated over his athletic career that he is a tremendous athlete, has great character, a competitive spirit. And aside from the age, this is a classic player development opportunity for us.”

Tebow hasn’t played baseball regularly since his junior year at Nease High School in Ponte Vedra, Florida, where he hit .494 and was all-county as a senior.


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