Singles and doubles

Unlike many politicians, Tim Tebow doesn’t promise home runs.

When the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner and former NFL quarterback announced last fall he’d pursue a career in professional baseball, Tebow didn’t vow to be the greatest. He said he’d work hard and take the lower place if necessary.

The lower place came: Tebow landed a minor league spot with the Columbia Fireflies—the New York Mets’ Class A affiliate in the not-so-prestigious South Atlantic League.

Tebow’s haters predictably scoffed, and they seemed to enjoy the thought of the hulking athlete reduced to the dugout at a humble ballpark in a small, South Carolina town.

On a chilly evening in early April, Tebow donned his Fireflies uniform, stepped up to the plate for his first at-bat in professional baseball—and blasted a home run.

The crowd went wild.

Tebow took it in stride, particularly after he went on to rack up three strikeouts. “I was just glad to drive in a run,” he said after the game. “And the ump said, ‘Keep going.’”

Driving in runs isn’t as popular in Washington, D.C. More often, politics seems like an elusive quest for grand slams, instead of an appreciation for base hits and solid pitches in the long stretches of a nine-inning game.

What country-altering accomplishments has a brand-new president achieved in his first 100 days in office, after eight years of a presidency held by the opposite party? We want grand slams. Now.

Politicians often drive such expectations. And voters often believe them.

On the night presidential candidate Barack Obama won the Democratic primary in 2008, he said the country would remember this as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

In 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump promised, “We’re going to win so much, you’re going to be sick and tired of winning .”

Again, the crowds went wild.

But like most presidents, when President Trump stepped up to bat in January, he learned the game-day reality: It’s not easy to hit home runs.

Trump struggled with his promised grand slam to repeal and replace Obamacare “immediately”: “Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated.”

Trump had promised to label China a currency manipulator, but backed off when he realized he needed China’s help to face down an increasingly belligerent North Korea.

After he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump told The Wall Street Journal, “After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy.”

Indeed, as the fans in Mudville learned in the famous poem Casey at the Bat, it’s not enough for a popular player to take the plate with lofty aspirations and a genuine desire to save the game.

During the election season, some voters with real problems seemed to feel about Trump the way the crowd in Mudville felt about the star player Casey: “If only Casey could but get a whack at that—we’d put up even money, now, with Casey at the bat.”

But most of those voters also likely know that while home runs are exciting, they’re hard to hit. Fans can cheer when Trump nominates a Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court or bans federal funding from international groups that perform abortions.

But it’s also OK to hope for base hits and steady progress toward a harder-fought win. Trump doesn’t need to promise grand slams all the time. And Americans don’t need to jeer every time he doesn’t deliver them.

There was “no joy in Mudville” when mighty Casey struck out. But Trump’s tenure is still in the early innings, and he has plenty of serious chances left to learn the fundamentals and work with teammates.

Learning that the game is difficult is a critical first step. There’s an important opportunity for the candidate who showed an unnerving level of personal pride to become a president who benefits from being humbled by a few strikeouts.

The writer of Proverbs says it plainly: “Humility comes before honor.”

That’s a hard lesson for anyone, but Tebow seemed to grasp it after his exhilarating home run in his first game. “I know so many people want to sensationalize it, but for me it’s just one opportunity—the first of a lot of games,” he told The New York Times.

“Tomorrow will be another opportunity to wake up, get to work, and try to get better.”