Pedro Martinez and Tom Brady — two of the greatest athletes in Boston sports history — were almost teammates.
Well, not really. But Martinez and Brady did cross paths before either etched their name in New England sports lore.
Martinez spent four seasons with the Montreal Expos before joining the Red Sox in 1998. Ahead of Martinez’s second season in Montreal, the Expos selected Brady — a high school catcher — in the 18th round of the MLB draft. Brady, of course, didn’t sign with the Expos, instead choosing to carry on with his football dream at Michigan.
But before Brady made a name for himself in Ann Arbor, Martinez had a chance to see Brady, the baseball player, up close in person.
“We drafted Tom Brady. I had the opportunity to throw BP to him in the cage,” Martinez recently said on MLB Network’s “Intentional Talk. “…That was BP, you want him to hit it. He was swinging it pretty good, too. He’s a good athlete — real good athlete.
Who knows, maybe Brady could have become a multi-tool player at the big league level had he stuck with baseball. That said, we can’t imagine the seven-time Super Bowl champion has even for one second dwelled on the decision he made in the mid-1990s.
