It is finally out there.
It is the card I have been waiting for since, well, I sat in the Shop at Home studio and witnessed first hand hearing Don West tell the collecting world that Charizard was the Mark McGwire of Japanese animation.
The Tom Brady Montreal Expos 2023 Bowman Draft card became a reality with the Dec. 12 release of the product and you may have heard more about it than you want to at this point, but there’s some pretty interesting baseball and hobby history you may not know about.
Brady is actually not the first quarterback to pick football over the Expos. Tennessee Volunteers legend Condredge Holloway was selected fourth overall in the 1971 draft as a shortstop. He opted to become a two-time Grey Cup winner and one of the greatest quarterbacks in CFL history before returning to Tennessee as their athletic director.
An Expo Fan Embraces The Card
I grew up less than a two-hour drive from Jarry Parc and Olympic Stadium, and went to countless Expos games as a youth and young adult. I tried to cheer for the Washington Nationals when they won the World Series. That was some tough poutine to swallow.
Brady was drafted as a catcher by the Expos in 1995. At that time, I was the editor of Canadian Sportscard Collector magazine.
We were very plugged into the Expos and Toronto Blue Jays. I got to be a part of a few media scrums and conference calls with Expos General Manager Kevin Malone. It was an exciting time for baseball in Montreal in 1994. The Expos were, by far, the best team in the major leagues. The baseball card market in Canada was also strong, as the Jays were coming off back-to-back World Series victories. At that time, most Canadian baseball fans followed and rooted for both teams as there was no interleague play.
Then the strike happened. It ultimately led to the death of baseball in Montreal.
I took specific interest after the 1995 draft in what Malone said about Brady, a promising high school player in Northern California.
“We were able to get him in the 18th round,” Malone said. “He dropped down that far because he is expected to go to the University of Michigan to be a quarterback. Otherwise, he would have been drafted much earlier.”
The scouting reports Brady was a lefthanded-hitting catcher who could hit for power and average, had a strong and accurate arm from behind the plate, and was very cerebral in calling games and handling pitchers. He had been a first baseman, but was moved to behind the plate in his senior year. He turned a lot of heads at a pre-draft workout in the Kingdome in Seattle, hitting a monster home run with a wooden bat.
Five years later, Brady’s name was brought up again by the Expos’ brass after he was drafted by the New England Patriots. Brady had a good career at Michigan, and spent much of his senior season platooning with Drew Henson, who ironically played third base in the New York Yankees organization and also became an NFL quarterback.
Brady was not impressive at the NFL combine. His athleticism wasn’t at an NFL level, some scouts said. Patriots scout Bobby Grier, whose son Mike was a star in the NHL, had seen a lot of Brady at Michigan and was adamant that the Patriots choose him in the sixth round. Had New England not picked him, there is a good chance that Brady would not have been drafted at all.
“There is a strong possibility that Tom Brady will get cut by the Patriots before the NFL season begins,” Malone said in the summer of 2000. “He has the potential to be an all-star level catcher. If we are able to sign him, he could develop into the best Expos catcher since Gary Carter.”
Baseball Led To Brady’s First NFL Card
In 2000, I was working for Collector’s Edge and its parent company, Shop At Home TV. Being an Expos fan and following the hype, there was an opportunity for Collector’s Edge to make the first Tom Brady rookie card. I jumped all over it.
Edge Supreme was traditionally the first football card set out on the market. Because we could sell it on Shop at Home around the hype of the draft, it was a product loaded with rookies. We had photographers working college games and bowl games, as well as at the all-star games such as the East-West Shrine Game and the Blue-Gray Game.
In order for a rookie to be included in a set, they had to sign their marketing agreement with Player’s Inc., the licensing arm of the NFLPA. Each week, Dawn Ridley Nash would send us an updated Excel sheet of who had signed. We needed to pick our rookies for the checklist and then see if we had photography. We had been using the mock drafts and scouting reports from every media source we could find. Many experts did not mention Tom Brady. Those who did mention him did not expect him to make the NFL.
I remember sitting in our photo room with Jane, our photo editor, going over the list. I was looking at the spreadsheet Dawn had sent us, and noticed that Tom Brady had signed his marketing form.
“Jane, did we have anyone shoot the Michigan Wolverines?”
“Yes, we’ve got some great shots.”
“Let’s put the quarterback in – Tom Brady.”
“He’s not even on any of our lists,” she said. Jane was a brilliant photographer, an amazing photo editor, and she really knew her stuff.
“I know,” I told her. “But he is expected to become a star in Major League Baseball as a catcher with the Expos. How cool would it be if Collector’s Edge has the first Tom Brady card when he becomes a big baseball star?”
Jane knew exactly where we were going with this. Within a half hour, she had picked out the photo for Tom Brady’s first card.
And that is how Tom Brady made it into Edge Supreme 2000 and had his first rookie card made.
Jersey Collection
One of the things I love to collect is jerseys. I have some very special autographed jerseys, I have some game-worn jerseys, some Russian jerseys, and I have some oddball jerseys that I have either purchased or had custom made. I have a Tim Tebow New York Mets jersey, for example. When Bryce Harper played for the Nationals I had a Harper Expos jersey made. One of the kids has a Michael Jordan number 45 White Sox jersey, as well as a #69 Glatt jersey from the movie Goon. Next up is a Shoresy jersey from the Sudbury Bulldogs.
But my favorite of all is my Montreal Expos number 12 Tom Brady jersey. If you have ever seen me or chatted with me at the National or the Expo, chances are I was wearing it.
I wore it to Fenway Park in 2022, and the few fans that knew Brady was an Expos draft pick thought my jersey was “wicked cool” or “wicked bad” or wicked something or other.
The jersey is the ultimate ‘what if’ jersey.
Now, Fanatics has even hopped on the ‘what if’ bandwagon and is selling Expos #12 Tom Brady jerseys with the 1995 uniform design.
Malone was interviewed by Bleacher Report in 2017 and still wonders ‘what if.’
“He was a very athletic young man. A big kid who had a great face, a major league face. Yes, we looked at the face,” Malone said in the interview. “He had an athletic, strong body, but there was room for development. As a scout, one of the first things you look at is just the body—the type of body, the athleticism and what kind of face does he have. I know that sounds a little strange.”
Rather than being the face of the franchise for the Montreal Expos, he became the most successful quarterback in NFL history.
Malone also said that Brady’s framework as a high school baseball player allowed plenty of room for major league upside.
“We know we could help guys learn how to receive and call a game, and we felt he had pretty good instincts—although he could play,” added Malone “We knew it would be a long shot in signing him. We took a flier on him and drafted him low.”
According to the Bleacher Report story, Malone left baseball to run the U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking, working full time to help rescue children caught in the sex trade.
Brady, meanwhile, has played along with the hype and seems to be having fun with it. Earlier this fall, he appeared at the flagship MLB Store wearing an Expos jersey. Expos merchandise is more popular now than it was when the team was still in Montreal. Tom Brady may not do for Expos jerseys what Taylor Swift did for Travis Kelce jersey sales, or what Shohei Ohtani has done for the Dodgers or what Messi did for Miami FC, but there will be a definite spike in any merchandise or memorabilia that ties Brady to the Expos.
For fans and collectors, the hype, and the card, is bittersweet. For the first time, the public is really being aware of how close the Expos came to signing him, and how deeply they believed they had a star on their hands.
Brady has always been popular in Montreal, as the city has a large New England Patriots fanbase, similar to how Toronto is Buffalo Bills territory and Vancouver is Seattle Seahawks territory. He teased the sports fans of Montreal on April Fool’s Day in 2021 by tweeting that the Expos were returning in 2022.
The video promoting 2023 Bowman Draft Baseball is a dream Brady is having, taking place in a Montreal sports bar and showing clips of him as a player having led the Expos to seven World Series. The video features former Expos like Vladimir Guerrero Sr., Pedro Martinez and Larry Walker. The video highlights Brady’s 649 career home runs and his three MVP awards.
And then comes what the Montreal Gazette calls the “gut punch.”
“Without him, they would have moved us out of Montreal.”
Ouch.
Regardless of the cruelty of the video, I have pulled out my binders of Expos cards and have been flipping through them over the past week. I have a ball signed by the entire 1969 Expos team from their inaugural season. I have programs from the early years and cards of everyone from Rusty Staub, Bill Stoneman, Boots Day and Coco Laboy to Andre Dawson, Gary Carter, Tom Raines and Tim Wallach to Vladdy, Walker, Pedro, the Big Unit before that horrible Mark Langston trade, and El Presidente. There are even the local cult hero favorites, like Bill Lee, Rodney Scott, Rex Hudler, FP Santangelo, Terry Francona, and legendary catcher John Boccabella. Despite being a career .219 hitter with only 26 home runs, he was a cult hero simply because of how the PA announcer said his name when he came to bat. Boccabella was the original number 12 behind the plate, and many of the Brady images as an Expo that have been circulating for years have Brady’s head photoshopped onto Boccabella’s body.
There’s a spot in my Expos binder amidst the sea of nine pocket pages for a Tom Brady card, though demand is easily exceeding supply and that will be a tough card to get. And I will likely have to go out and find a Brady autographed baseball to go beside my Tim Raines and Steve Rogers signed balls.
And while I’m at it, I better get a John Boccabella ball too.
