National Football League

New trading card campaign imagines a world where Tom Brady played baseball

Published Dec. 12, 2023 10:53 p.m. ET

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In 1995, the Montreal Expos drafted a left-handed hitting catcher out of Serra High School in San Mateo, Calif. named Tom Brady. But instead of continuing his time on the diamond after an impressive high school baseball career, Brady went to play football as a quarterback at the University of Michigan.

You know the rest of the story. Brady assembled an NFL career widely regarded as the greatest of all time, winning six Super Bowls with the New England Patriots and one with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

But what if Brady had decided to embark on a professional baseball journey instead all the way back in 1995? A new campaign from the famed baseball card company Topps imagines a universe where that happened, releasing a video glimpse into that world with plenty of hidden references for sports junkies. Brady himself posted the video to social media Tuesday:

The campaign was unveiled Tuesday in honor of "Brady Day" or 12/12, evoking the jersey number he wore throughout his NFL career. The length of the video is one minute and 20 seconds long, or 1:20, another reference to the number. The video ends with Brady awaking from his baseball-themed dream with his alarm going off at 12:12.

The video, set in an Expos-themed bar called "Brady's Brasserie," shows Expos fans reminiscing on Brady's legendary baseball career, where he also won seven titles and hit 649 home runs (the real-life Brady had 649 touchdown passes in the NFL). 

In addition to showing several individual baseball accolades for Brady, video also references "the greatest comeback of all time" against the Atlanta Braves. Brady, of course, led the greatest Super Bowl comeback of all time after being down 28-3 to the Atlanta Falcons in 2017. It even mentions that he would have more titles if he did not lose twice to the San Francisco Giants. Brady famously lost two Super Bowls to the New York Giants.

Eli Manning, the quarterback of those New York Giants teams, even got in on the bit Tuesday, releasing his own video "taunting' Brady complete with a San Francisco Giants uniform and two World Series rings.

Manning was not the only celebrity cameo in the promotion. Three baseball Hall of Famers who played for the Expos in real life are seated around a table at the bar talking about their former "teammate" Brady — Larry Walker, Vladimir Guerrero Sr. and Pedro Martinez. All three, of course, eventually departed the team and reached even greater heights elsewhere, with the Rockies, Red Sox and Angels respectively.

In this universe, Brady is a baseball Hall of Famer as well, and apparently was able to circumvent the five-year waiting period after retirement for his election. The Baseball Hall of Fame even designed a baseball plaque for Brady, showing that he also finished his career in Tampa Bay — but with the MLB's Rays instead of the NFL's Buccaneers.

And in a final twist of the knife to Expos fans, there's even a throwaway line near the end of the video about how the team would have been moved out of Montreal without Brady. Of course, the real-life Expos did move from Montreal to Washington, D.C. and rebranded themselves as the Nationals starting in the 2005 season.

Topps also special edition baseball cards Tuesday as part of their MLB Draft set featuring Brady in an Expos jersey, with 81 of individual cards signed by the NFL legend himself. Other players in the set include Paul Skenes, Max Clarke and Wyatt Langford, top prospects from the Pirates, Tigers and Rangers respectively who were selected at the top of the 2023 MLB Draft.

Another special-edition card released by Topps on Tuesday even features "Expos manager" Bill Belichick, Brady's longtime Patriots head coach reimagined in a baseball dugout.

This alternate universe is not as far-fetched as it may seem. Topps also released a video of John Hughes, the Expos scout who evaluated Brady, saying he believed at the time Brady was destined for baseball stardom. 

"We grade tools as scouts," Hughes said. "The hidden tool is makeup,  and Tom's makeup was off the charts. He was a left-handed hitting catcher that had power to throw, good receiver. [There is] every reason to think that he'd been  at the top of the game. My player comparison at that point in time would have been [longtime star Minnesota Twins catcher] Joe Mauer."

Then-Expos general manager Kevin Malone is on record with a similar sentiment. Maline told Bleacher Report in 2017 that he believes Brady could have become "one of the greatest catchers ever."

There is even a hint in the video about Brady's post-baseball endeavors, as Brady is shown on a TV in the bar starring in a commercial for his car dealership, "Brady Auto."

The real-life Brady, of course, is set to begin his next journey as an NFL analyst for FOX Sports starting in the 2024 season.

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