Tom Brady had questions—so, so many questions. They arrived early on several consecutive mornings in October 2019, delivered before sunrise, over email. Usually, this process works the other way. But, in this instance, Brady was the one writing, which made for an odd twist: He had questions he needed answered. And what he asked opened a window into his brain, how it processed the task in front of him, why details mattered because of how they added up to something greater, a lot more.
Already an NFL superstar, entrepreneur, documentarian, celebrity pitchman and recovery guru, this particular task was to pen the foreword for the book I co-authored with Jim Gray, Talking to GOATs: The Moments You Remember and the Stories You Never Heard, a memoir of the sportscaster’s life and career. With apologies to book editors, this is generally a perfunctory exercise, where the name matters more than the words, which are typically written quickly with minimal effort.
