What's Tom Brady like?
I wish I had a dollar for every time I've been asked that question.
What's Tom Brady like?
"I don't know," I always say.
Yeah, but you're a sportswriter, invariably comes the next question.
"So what," I always say. "You know as much as I do."
So I try to tell them that, yeah, I've stood around the Patriots' quarterback's locker and been part of a group of reporters asking him questions, and, yeah, I've sat in countless interview rooms while he did his thing at the podium, always giving the media the bare bones, smiling at all the right places, getting by on charm and football cliches.
I've heard him countless times on the radio, where he knows the drill and knows what to say, as if he's an actor and he's memorized the script.
But what's Tom Brady really like?
Who really knows?
It's one of life's small ironies that in this age of a 24-hour news cycle, and a voracious media, we seem to know less and less about the people in the news.
Hello, Tom Brady.
It's been eight years since he first jumped out of anonymity and became one of the iconic figures in New England sports history, eight years since he's been living in the middle of the media microscope, and what do we really know?
Not a whole lot, to tell the truth.
Oh, we know about what he's done on the football field. That's on television every Sunday, and in the sports pages the next morning. And we know that he has a son with Bridget Moynihan and is now involved with supermodel Gisele Bundchen, for that's the fodder for gossip columns and celebrity magazines, the landscape Brady now lives in, whether he wants to or not.
But after that?
Brady has become the prototype of the contemporary superstar who glides through his fame as artfully as he evades pass rushers in the pocket. He knows what to say, and he invariably does it in an engaging manner — not with the occasional brusqueness of coach Bill Belichick. Brady seems too much of a nice guy for that.
Last week, he met the media for the first time in training camp, even if camp has been going on for three weeks.
"I love being here and I love being on this team," he told a pack of media. "It is a great situation. I have a great head coach, great coaches, great ownership and it is a great place to be. Great media. Doesn't get any better than this does it?"
Vintage, Brady.
Smiles all around, say the right things, and get out of the pocket before someone puts a hit on you.
Then again, that is superstar athletes these days, where there is almost a moat between them and the media, a new world in which everything is managed and controlled in ways it never used to be. Gone are the days when writers sat around in the locker room with players talking about world events and the mysteries of the fly pattern.
The simple truth is that most of the time, professional athletes no longer need the media the way they once did, certainly not the local media. Many athletes now believe that the media can only hurt them, a perception that's changed everything and led to a numbing succession of sound bites that essentially say nothing, and quotes that sound as though they came out of the same tired football handbook.
The Patriots are masters of this, of course, infamous for their corporate speak and weekly talking points, and Brady has learned his lessons well.
What's Tom Brady really like?
You've got a better chance of finding out what Tom Cruise is really like, for suffice it to say that Brady's life has now become a lot closer to a high-profile actor than it is to some anonymous lineman.
The first real insight into Brady came a few years ago with the publication of "Moving the Chains" by Boston Globe magazine writer Charles Pierce. What emerged, aside from the tale of the football frog that became a king, is that he wants it all, and he wants to be perceived as just one of the guys, too.
Or as one of his sisters once said, the football has come easy to him, it's the celebrity thing that's hard.
Ah, the celebrity thing?
Like being involved with a supermodel and having paparazzi trailing you around New York as if they're pass rushers with you in their sights. Like being on the cover of this month's Esquire, in a suit with a slightly askew tie, as if you're trying out for the George Clooney parts.
And the slice of irony here?
He says more in the Esquire article, even though the writer gets exasperated with him for being so guarded, for his wariness. For instance, how about this quote:
"Look at the attention I get," he said. "It's because I throw a football. But that's what society values. That's not what God values. God could give (an expletive) as far as I'm concerned. He didn't invent the game. We did. I have some eye-hand coordination and I can throw the ball. I don't think that matters to God."
And if he's uneasy with the celebrity life he now lives in, he tries to deal with it by not dealing with it, if that makes any sense. He wants to quarterback his team, get ready for this new season, not worry about the things he can't control, not his celebrity status or anything else.
So, what's Tom Brady really like?
The days of trying to figure that out are long gone.
