So Tim Tebow wants to play professional baseball, even though he last played the sport as a junior in high school. Back then, he was a power-hitting outfielder who hit .494 with four home runs as his team reached the state semifinals. The Angels actually wanted to draft him, but he never turned in his information card.
Of course, at 29 years old and 11 years removed from baseball, the odds of a team even signing him are slim. Then again, the Chicago White Sox gave a basketball player named Michael Jordan a shot back in 1994, when he was 31 years old. Put immediately in Double-A, Jordan hit .202/.289/.266 with 30 stolen bases. It wasn't pretty, but even doing that well was impressive.
Really, it was a reminder that baseball is the most difficult of sports. You can't rely on raw athleticism if you don't have the hand-eye coordination to hit 95-mph fastballs and nasty sliders. We wish Tebow luck, but here's a list of football players who tried to play baseball and discovered they were much better at football.
Jim Thorpe
A sportswriter once called him the "most marvelous creation fashioned in human likeness that has ever inhabited the earth," but Thorpe's major league career was less than stellar. John McGraw, who loved athletic players who could run, signed him with the New York Giants in 1913 to a three-year contract that made him the highest-paid rookie ever. It soon became apparent that Thorpe struggled with curveballs, and he batted just 122 times over those three seasons, going back to the minors in 1914 and 1915. He later had stints with the Reds and Braves, and actually hit .327 in limited duty his final season in 1919, but spend the next few years in the minors while also playing pro football.
Sammy Baugh
The NFL Hall of Famer played one season in the minors for the St. Louis Cardinals and hit .200.
Vic Janowicz
The 1950 Heisman Trophy winner for Ohio State, Janowicz initially pursued a baseball career over the NFL, signing with the Pittsburgh Pirates. As a bonus baby under the rules of the time, he had to remain on the big league roster for two seasons and he hit .215 in 83 games, playing catcher as a rookie and then third base. He then quit baseball to sign with the Redskins, although an automobile accident ended his NFL career.
Jay Schroeder
The Toronto Blue Jays drafted him third overall in 1979, a strong-armed, power-hitting catcher from Pacific Palisades, California. He had trouble making contract in pro ball, however, hitting .213 over four seasons with 477 strikeouts in 407 games. He went back to football, playing quarterback at UCLA and then 10 years in the NFL.
Bubby Brister
The Detroit Tigers drafted him in the fourth round in 1981, but he hit just .180 without a home run in his lone minor league season. Turning to football, he played 14 years in the NFL, including several as the starting quarterback for the Steelers.
John Lynch
The two-sport star at Stanford and nine-time Pro Bowl safety with Tampa Bay was a second-round pick as a pitcher by the Florida Marlins in 1992. He started nine games in a brief minor league career, walking 29 batters in 38 innings with just 19 strikeouts.
Ricky Williams
The 1998 Heisman winner left the University of Texas as the NCAA's all-time rushing leader and played 12 seasons in the NFL. In college, he also spent four seasons playing outfield in the minors after the Philadelphia Phillies drafted him in the eighth round in 1995. He hit .211 with just four home runs in 613 plate appearances, with a poor strikeout-to-walk ratio of 179/35.
Chris Weinke
Hey, another Heisman winner! Weinke won the award as a 28-year-old senior at Florida State and then spent several years in the NFL, mostly as a backup quarterback. He first spent six years in the minors with the Toronto Blue Jays after getting drafted in the second round in 1990. He had some initial success in the low minors and did reach Triple-A, but pursued his football career after hitting .186 his final season.
He's won a Super Bowl, but the Seahawks' quarterback was a light-hitting second baseman for two years in the Colorado Rockies' system while in college, hitting .229 with five home runs in 93 games in low-A ball. "There wasn't anything I didn't like about baseball," Wilson told ESPN.com's Jim Caple in 2013. "It was obviously a struggle, and you have to continue to fight through it, but that's part of the game and that's why you love the game of baseball. But I just knew I had this other love, this crazy passion about football, and nothing was like it."
The New York Yankees drafted Weeden in the second round out of high school in Oklahoma, but after posting a 5.02 ERA over five minor league seasons, he went back to football at Oklahoma State. The Browns drafted the quarterback in the first round in 2012 -- at age 29! -- and he's now with the Cowboys.
Of course, there have been some success stories, most famously Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders, although both were better at football than baseball. Still, they were good -- and definitely exciting -- major leaguers. John Elway played one season of minor league baseball before embarking on his NFL career, and he hit .318. Scouts viewed him as a marginal major league prospect. The other big success story was Brian Jordan. He played three seasons as a safety for the Falcons and was a Pro Bowl alternate in 1991, his final season. He then decided to stick with baseball full time and played 15 years in the majors, making one All-Star team and racking up 32.8 career WAR.