How Brady’s childhood friends in San Mateo remember the NFL legend originally appeared on NBC Sports Bayarea
Before Tampa Bay Buccaneers strategist Tom Brady was throwing touchdown passes and winning NFL Super Bowls, he was just a kid from San Mateo playing ball on the street.
On Sunday, he goes back home playing against the team he supported at the time for only the second time in his 23-season career.
The 45-year-old grew up as a 49ers fan and is remembered by his childhood friends as a talented and competitive youngster – something that should come as no surprise to fans of the living footballing legend.
“Tommy is younger than me, but every time we played we needed numbers,” Brady’s former neighbor Bobby Aguirre told FOX Sports’ Greg Auman. “It was all about sports.”
Whether it was football, baseball, or just riding bikes around the block, the Portola Drive neighborhood group of kids were usually outside. And while it was all fun and playful for the most part, no one took his contests more seriously than Brady.
“Even then he was the most competitive kid,” another childhood friend, Scott Cannel, told Auman. “He hated losing. He hated hitting. He hated throwing someone badly. It was kind of funny how competitive he was back then, how competitive he is now.”
Several former friends of Brady’s reminded Auman how good Brady was at baseball, blasting tennis balls over houses with a gifted swing. He was eventually drafted by the Montreal Expos, but chose football instead and signed with Michigan after high school.
Brady, of course, went on to play for the New England Patriots, when the team selected him 199th overall in the 2000 NFL Draft – something that brought his longtime love for the 49ers to an end.
But San Francisco turning him down in the draft didn’t impact the drive he’s possessed since childhood, which has helped him win seven Super Bowls and break countless NFL records. .
“Being younger than me, the bigger ones, we were the quarterback and the receivers and Tommy [saying], ‘Throw me! Throw me! and the most interesting thing for me was his perseverance at that age,” Aguirre told Auman. “He has to be in the game, and he’s going to give it his all. As you get older, God forbid you beat him in a game of pool, or Rochambeau [rock-paper-scissors], it is competitive. That’s the advantage you need to be good at this level.”
Growing up in the shadow of a 49ers dynasty with Joe Montana at the helm, it might have come as a shock to many in San Mateo when Brady transformed himself into a dynasty signalman.
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But his friends back home knew he had it in him from the start. And on Sunday, many of them will be in the stands, along with Brady’s family.
“It’s all the people who supported him for 23 years,” his sister, Maureen Brady, told Auman. “It’s coming to an end. He’ll probably never play in San Francisco again.”
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