Terry Bradshaw checked into a hospital under the name ‘Tom Brady’ … in 1983
My most-read newsletter so far was the one I wrote about the Mickey Mantle slide — an incredible play from the 1960 World Series that I found out about on Twitter.
Well, Twitter came through again earlier this week, introducing me to a story that was forgettable at the time, but is pretty unbelievable and even a little eerie in retrospect.
According to a 1983 newspaper article found by Quirky Research — which the New York Times has astutely referred to as “a blog whose name is self-explanatory” — Terry Bradshaw once checked into a Louisiana hospital under the assumed name “Thomas Brady.”
This wasn’t goofy Terry Bradshaw having some fun in his old age. This was 34-year-old Terry Bradshaw going in for minor surgery on his throwing elbow late in his Hall of Fame career. The Tom Brady who just won his seventh Super Bowl last month was only 6 years old at the time.
The Shreveport Times story ran under the headline “Steelers’ ‘Tom Brady’ undergoes arm surgery.” Presumably, the page designers shortened “Thomas” to “Tom” to fit the headline into the space (I’ve been there).
The serendipity here is pretty wild.
As the doctor says in the article, many athletes are admitted under assumed names to “keep the press and fans away.” I assume Bradshaw picked the name “Thomas Brady” because those initials match his own initials.
But Bradshaw, the first quarterback to win four Super Bowls, couldn’t possibly imagine he was using the exact name of the guy who would ultimately break his record three decades later. (And a guy who is hated by Steelers fans as much as he’s hated by any NFL fan base.)
My favorite part of discovering this on Twitter, though, is that the writer of the story, a guy named Lee Ivory, saw this post and shared his own first-person account of how he found the story. Right place, right time.
Crazy stuff.
Say what you will about Twitter — and there are a lot of negative things to say — but I just love it when people find these old sports tidbits and share them with the world.
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