What Tom Brady wants, Tom Brady often gets, but he may have asked a little too much of baseball star Aaron Judge on a recent episode of the podcast “Let’s Go!,” which Brady co-hosts with Larry Fitzgerald and Jim Gray.
During Judge’s brief appearance on the podcast, Brady brought up the slugger’s pursuit of a new contract, noting that he’d love to see him switch from the MLB to NFL.
“I was certainly wondering what it would take to get you down here in Tampa to be a tight end for us next year,” the quarterback joked.
“The size, the catch radius, the power — I mean, this could be something that we could be onto,” Brady said, noting that Judge was a “great high school football player.”
Judge did indeed play football in high school, as well as baseball and basketball. He got offers from the football coaches at the University of Notre Dame, Stanford University and other schools, but he chose to pursue a career in baseball, his first love.
“Even after the Oakland A’s selected him in the 31st round of the 2010 MLB draft, he didn’t waver,” as Bleacher Report noted in 2017.
Judge continued to develop while playing in college and for other, offseason teams. In 2013, he moved up from being drafted in the 31st round to being drafted 32nd overall by the New York Yankees, the article said. The rest is history.
“I think obviously baseball turned out pretty well for you,” Brady said on the podcast before repeating his proposal for Judge to become a multisport athlete again.
Judge joked that the quarterback’s idea had promise.
“We could get a nice little split contract. ... We could find a way to work this out. Just give me some looks in the red zone and then I go off and hit some homers after that. We’ll figure something out,” he said.
He added, “If Tom’s tossing me touchdowns, I’ll play for free.”
Brady, who famously convinced tight end Rob Gronkowski to unretire in 2020 and join him on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, told Judge they should keep the negotiation going after the Yankees’ season is done.
“You win the World Series, maybe we’ll use you in December,” Brady said.