Through My Eyes by Tim Tebow Read Free Book Online

games, playing all over Florida and around the country. During the summers, we’d play maybe ten or eleven games a week—with two each Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I remember many Sundays where we’d leave church and I would change into my uniform in the car as we drove to a game.
    At various times during those years on the traveling team, I was invited to play for teams in other states as well. I remember a couple in particular: one in Georgia and one in Texas. Here we were, just kids playing baseball, and for the sake of winning games, these people were willing to fly me to different parts of the country to play for them. My dad squashed that idea before it ever had a chance to take off. He was concerned with the time it would take away from the family and school studies, and he also worried that my arm would get overworked if he wasn’t there to monitor my pitch count. He was a stickler for protecting our arms.
    And, yes, he really did monitor my pitch count. After a great deal of talking with major league pitchers, Dad determined how much, in a game and in a week, I could throw without risking injury to my arm. One time in particular, Dad told our Tidal Wave coach, Matt Redding, that I had hit my pitch count. Before I’d joined the team, Dad and Coach Redding had already been good friends, which was probably why I was allowed to play on a traveling team in the first place, but this day, Dad was getting a bit upset with his friend, the Coach.
    Dad walked over to him at one point and said, “Matt. He’s thrown enough.” He didn’t have to remind Coach about the terms for our participation on the team: only one pitching appearance per week, with a maximum of eighty-five pitches. Surprisingly, Coach didn’t immediately respond, and Dad continued.
    “Matt, either go out there and take him out, now, or I will. And if I have to do it, then it’s the last time he’ll ever play for this team.”
    No one would ever claim that God gave Dad the gift of subtlety or diplomacy, at least not when he feels strongly about something, and especially when he feels strongly about something that involves one of his children.
    Coach took me out. That may be the only time that they disagreed on anything, which makes it so memorable; Coach was really good, and Dad trusted him with me.
    My dad never coached us formally in a team setting because of international trips and his irregular schedule. What he did was spend lots of time with us, teaching us not only to hit, but also to throw. Apparently, some people have even commented of late on that throwing motion.
    Dad’s fault.
    He was not only focused on our arms, but also on our overall well-being. Eventually I felt that I’d taken working out with surgical tubing attached to doors as far as I wanted or could and had done push-ups and sit-ups, for hours, and I wanted to start on weights. My dad kept reminding me that Herschel Walker had turned out to be a pretty fair player with only push-ups and sit-ups, but it did little to dissuade me—I really wanted to start on weights.
    “Not until you get your first pimple,” he would tell me. He was a health and human-performance major at Florida, and people in the athletic world had convinced my dad that there was no point in training with weights before puberty, when the body starts manufacturing enough testosterone to be able to effectively begin to build muscle through weight training. I had no reason to doubt him, but that didn’t stop me from asking. Over and over.
    Finally, he gave in. He says it was because I had hit puberty, while my recollection is that it was just a bit earlier than that. Either way, I finally got a weight set that we kept in the barn. I think Mom felt like the barn would give the furniture and other items in the house a level of protection. That was all I had asked for as a Christmas present, and it was a gift that allowed me to change and improve my training regimen.
    I kept push-ups and sit-ups in my routine,