Before he was the best quarterback in the NFL, before Deflategate or Gisele - hell, before he was Tom Brady - Tommy was just a 17-year-old two-sport star at Junípero Serra High School with a tough choice to make.
On June 2, 1995, the Montreal Expos called out Brady's name in the 18th round of the MLB amateur draft, not long after the 6-foot-3 catcher committed to Michigan, which wanted him to play quarterback. Obviously, he couldn't play professional baseball and be the Wolverines' quarterback.
"I actually felt he was a better baseball player in high school than he was a football player," Brady's high school baseball coach, Pete Jensen, told Rachel Brady of the Globe and Mail in 2012. "I told everyone he would play in the majors some day."
That didn't happen. Instead, Brady went on to become arguably the greatest quarterback in football history, leading the New England Patriots to four Super Bowl championships as part of perhaps the most dominant sports dynasty of the past quarter-century.
On Thursday, the 21st anniversary of the 1995 MLB draft, Brady said he has no regrets about his choice to go with football over baseball.
"Twenty-one years ago today I was fortunate to be selected by the Expos in the 1995 MLB Draft," Brady wrote Thursday on his Facebook page. "But.....I'm so happy I stuck with football!"
Brady, now 38, ranks among the top five in NFL history in regular-season passing yards and touchdowns (and owns just about every postseason record available to a quarterback), but certain talent evaluators are convinced he could've made it in the big leagues, too.
"I think he would have been a pro," John Hughes, a longtime scout, told MLB.com's Joe Frisaro last year. "He had all the intangibles. He could throw, left-handed power. There is no reason to think this guy couldn't have been a big-league catcher."
