We'll never know what Tom Brady would have done in his baseball career if he didn't choose to go the football route, but Fanatics is giving us an opportunity to see what his rookie card would have looked like as a member of the Montreal Expos.
December 12 is "Brady Day," according to Fanatics, where they are releasing a new set of Topps baseball cards, Bowman Draft 2023, which features a number of Brady rookie cards along with other real MLB prospects.
To promote the launch, Fanatics released an ad with Brady, along with some former Expos — Vladimir Guerrero, Larry Walker, and Pedro Martinez — who would have been his teammates in Montreal.
It was all a dream… right?! @Topps @MLB @michaelrubin pic.twitter.com/iYoj3gCmUX
— Tom Brady (@TomBrady) December 12, 2023
Some old friends like Eli Manning and the man who scouted Brady for the Expos helped celebrate 12/12 in this fictional world. Even the Baseball Hall of Fame got involved showing us what a plaque would have looked like had he made it Cooperstown, New York instead of Canton, Ohio, where he will be end up in 2028.
There are a limited number of Brady cards in the set, and he didn't just add his signature to certain ones.
The 2023 Bowman Draft baseball set includes base cards of Brady and features 81 numbered, autographed cards of the legendary quarterback. Autographed variations consist of gold out of /50, orange out of /25, red out of /5, and a 1-of-1 Superfractor.
Brady had a little fun with the on-card autos and added inscriptions on two of the parallels. Both are No. 12 cards — the jersey number Brady wore for all 23 years he played in the NFL.
On the orange parallel numbered 12/25, underneath Brady's signature, he wrote, "Allons Aux Expos!" That French inscription loosely translates to, "Let's go Expos!" The gold parallel 12/50 features the inscription, "If baseball doesn't work out there's always football."
Along with the Brady autographed cards, there are non-auto refractor parallels. They include aqua lava to /199, blue to /150, green to /99, yellow lava to /75, gold to /50, orange to /25, red to /5, and a Superfractor.
"I was a decent catcher. But being a catcher and being tall doesn't work. So I had to pick football instead," said Brady, an 18th-round pick by the Expos in 1995, said at a Topps event in October where he also traded one of his $1,000 NFL rookie cards for a fan's Philadelphia Eagles jersey.
