A great quarterback, Tom Brady 'was a really good receiver'

Tom Brady, the quarterback who has played in more Super Bowls -- and won more -- than any player in history, went to the same high school -- Junipero Serra in San Mateo, Calif. -- as Barry Bonds, who hit more home runs than any player in baseball history. Brady was there about 10 years after Bonds, and he also played baseball at the school that was commonly known as Serra.

The school has been renamed Canyon Hills. But when it was still Serra, and Brady was the left-handed-hitting catcher on the baseball team, he was a good enough ballplayer to be drafted by the Montreal Expos in the 18th round of the 1995 MLB Draft.

The Expos' Northern California area scout at the time was John Hughes, who’s now with the Oakland A’s.

“I’d actually gone to Serra to look at one of Tom’s teammates,” Hughes said on Wednesday. “But then there’s this left-handed-hitting catcher with power, and who could really throw. I called Jim Fleming, my West Coast supervisor, and said, ‘You need to come and see this guy.’”

Fleming did. Hughes wrote up his final report on Brady in the world before computers, made three copies and sent it out in the mail, certain the Expos were going to draft Tom Brady, even if it meant drafting him late.

By then, Dave Littlefield, a scout with the Tigers now, had come to Serra High School to see Brady for himself. He described his job with the Expos in those days as “national cross-checker.”

“I was like the national sales rep,” Littlefield said with a laugh Wednesday morning, after finding out the way we all did that Brady had announced his retirement “for good” from pro football after one of the greatest careers in the history of American sports.

But back in 1995, when the Expos were only seeing the left-handed-hitting high school catcher, Littlefield had seen everything with his own eyes that Hughes had. I asked him, nearly 30 years later, what he remembered best about the 18-year-old the Expos had taken in the 18th round.

“Tall, good-looking kid, good-looking hitter, too,” Littlefield said.

Then he paused and said, “The arm worked pretty well, as you might imagine.”

Hughes and Littlefield knew a bit about Serra’s history with high-profile athletes. In addition to Bonds, Lynn Swann, the Steelers’ Hall of Fame wide receiver, had gone there.

“All in all, we were aware that when it came to sports, this was a high-end high school,” Littlefield said. “We were also very well aware that the kid had been offered a scholarship to play quarterback at Michigan.”

The Giants were still playing at Candlestick Park in ‘95. After the Draft, Brady was offered the chance to come to Candlestick and work out. He dressed in the Expos' clubhouse, then took batting practice on the field long before the Giants were out for early batting practice on a miserably cold Candlestick night, before going through some defensive drills.

“The [Expos] players I knew best at that time were Rondell White and F.P. Santangelo,” Hughes said. “After the workout, they were talking to Tom in front of a locker where he was sitting. Something I’ll never forget? The way they were reacting to him, like he was the one commanding the room. He was the most impressive high school kid, off the field, I’d ever met. Even then, he had this amazing presence.

“Rondell finally asked him about football. Tom told him about Michigan. Rondell said, You’ve got a scholarship to play where? Go to school, kid!’ I remember saying to Kevin Malone, the Expos' GM, ‘Not sure our guys are really helping us here.’”

Brady went to Michigan. Even after four years there, the Patriots only drafted him in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL Draft, and not until 198 other players had been selected before him. The rest, of course, is all part of Brady’s personal legend, and American sports history, which ultimately extended until Brady was one more season past his 45th birthday -- as amazing a stat as any other number attached to his career.

“I guess you could say Tom made the right decision to stick with football,” Littlefield joked.

And yet: It will always be worth wondering what might have happened in baseball if things hadn’t worked out for Brady in Ann Arbor; if he might have changed his mind about baseball.

“I’ve always wondered the same thing,” said Hughes, who saw Brady first as a ballplayer. “We still valued him as a prospect even after he finished playing college football, and even though he hadn’t play baseball since high school. I remember telling people, ‘This guy is still legit as a prospect.’”

And Littlefield would add: “Over the years, I’d see video of him taking swings in some batting cage, and I’d always think, 'Yeah, I remember that swing.'”

On the day that quarterback Tom Brady retired, for good, Littlefield finished up with his own personal memories of Brady, high school catcher, this way:

“Guy was a really good receiver.”