For the very first time, Seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady will be featured on a baseball trading card in the newest Topps Bowman Draft set. Brady will be included in the set as a member of the Montreal Expos, who took the future New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers great in the 18th round of the 1995 MLB Draft.
With the new set launching on “Brady Day” — December 12 — Brady starred in a commercial for the cards where he explored an alternate reality where he pursued an MLB career instead of playing in the NFL, with former Expos stars and would-have-been teammates Vladimir Guerrero, Larry Walker, and Pedro Martinez all making an appearance.
The commercial imagines Brady’s success, including an all-time great comeback “against Atlanta”, and it also entertains the idea that Brady would have prevented the Expos from being moved out of Montreal and becoming the Washington Nationals. For good measure, Brady’s accomplishments are countered by two World Series losses to the San Francisco Giants. Eli Manning got in on the fun by showing off San Francisco’s two titles earned against Brady.
Per Topps, the set with base cards of Brady includes 81 autographed and numbered cards, a few of which include special inscriptions. One card was signed “Allons Aux Expos!” by Brady (loosely translated to “Let’s go Expos!”), with another signed with the message “If baseball doesn’t work out there’s always football.”
Brady’s baseball career was part of his time as a three-sport athlete at Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo, Calif., where he had a .311 batting average and eight home runs. Despite being drafted by the Expos, Brady chose to pursue football after getting a full scholarship to play quarterback at the University of Michigan.
