If you know anything about Tom Brady's life story, you probably know that before he was an all-time great, and before he was a Michigan man, he was a two-sport prospect as a high school athlete. Brady wasn't just a quarterback. He was also the catcher for his high school baseball team. He was even good enough to get drafted by the Montreal Expos in the 18th round of the 1995 MLB Draft. 

Prior to the draft, Brady and some other prospects were invited to Seattle to work out for the Mariners, who wanted to get a closer look at some of the prospects in the upcoming draft. While there, Brady and his teammate, Greg Millichap, wandered into the Mariners locker room. They stumbled upon the locker of one Ken Griffey Jr., who at the time was a 25-year old superstar about to make his sixth consecutive All-Star appearance. 

What happened next, Brady told The MMQB, was that Brady and Millichap saw Junior's jersey hanging in his locker and decided to take it off the hanger and try the thing on. "The jersey was cool," Brady told The MMQB in an email. "Ken Griffey Jr. was the idol of all of us at that age."

And that wasn't the only time Brady crossed paths with major-leaguers. After the Expos snatched him up with their 18th round selection, they invited Brady to work out with the team when it was in San Francisco on a road trip. (Brady is from the Bay Area himself.) They gave him a jersey, had him meet with the GM, take some swings, and do some catching. 

Expos scout John Hughes gave Brady a chaperone for the day in the hopes that the player would convince Brady to spurn the Wolverines and turn pro playing baseball. Things did not exactly work out as planned. 

Hughes told FP Santangelo, a 27-year-old outfielder, to watch after Brady and chaperone him for the day, because the Expos wanted to sign this guy. But once Santangelo heard that Brady was going to play quarterback at Michigan, it was all he could talk about. Santangelo's mother had attended Michigan and he'd grown up in the state bleeding maize and blue. At one point, Santangelo took Brady around the clubhouse and introduced him to the guys, including Pedro Martinez, the ace, and Felipe Alou, the manager. "I didn't even introduce him as, 'He's going to sign with the Expos,' " Santangelo says. "It was: 'This is Tom Brady, he plays quarterback at Michigan.' I do remember that [Brady] was very shy. He was saying, 'I'm like fifth-string right now, who knows how that's going to go.' "

Other players took an interest, too, and soon Brady was sitting at a locker, holding court with six or seven Expos asking him questions. "We were telling him," Santangelo says, " 'Why would you make $800 a month in the minor leagues when you can be the quarterback at the University of Michigan? You're a good-looking guy, you can probably have a lot of fun off the field, too.' … We told him: 'Go play football at Michigan! Are you kidding me?'"

And the rest, as they say, is NFL history.