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Ten for Tom - Brady joins exclusive club with 10th title game

Published:Thursday | February 4, 2021 | 12:07 AM
Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady (left) throws a pass as quarterback’s coach Clyde Christensen looks on before an NFL football game against the Carolina Panthers on Sunday, September 20, 2020, in Tampa, Florida.
AP
Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady (left) throws a pass as quarterback’s coach Clyde Christensen looks on before an NFL football game against the Carolina Panthers on Sunday, September 20, 2020, in Tampa, Florida.

A 10th trip to the Super Bowl puts Tom Brady in some exclusive company across sports.

Brady’s 10th trip to the title round comes a few months after LeBron James did the same in the NBA Finals, making them the only players in the four major North American sports leagues to do that in more than 30 years.

Brady and James are the first players to make it to the title round for a 10th time since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did it in his final season in the NBA in 1989.

In all, 24 players have done that in any of the leagues, according to research from SportRadar, with most of them having been part of dynasties with the Boston Celtics, New York Yankees or Montreal Canadiens.

Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra has the most championship round appearances getting there 14 times in his 18 seasons with the Yankees.

Berra’s former team-mate, Mickey Mantle, Celtics legend Bill Russell, and hockey stars Jean Beliveau, Red Kelly, Henri Richard and Maurice Richard are next with 12 apiece.

They are followed by Sam Jones (NBA), Whitey Ford (MLB), Doug Harvey (NHL), Bert Olmstead (NHL) and Jean-Guy Talbot (NHL).

The three others baseball players to go to the World Series are Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Elston Howard.

Six other hockey players did it in the Stanley Cup Final: Bernie Geoffrion, Gordie Howe, Tom Johnson, Dickie Moore, Jacques Plante and Claude Provost.

A win on Sunday would be Brady’s seventh championship to go along with his three regular season MVP awards, a feat only Russell, Mantle, Berra, and DiMaggio have achieved in the four major sports leagues.

The Buccaneers are just the latest team from Tampa to make it to the title game, following the NHL’s Lightning and baseball’s Rays, who made it last fall.

When the Super Bowl kicks off, it will be 133 days since Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final. The World Series was played in between the two. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, that’s the second shortest span for a metro area to appear in three championships in the four major North American team sports leagues. In 2003, the Devils, Nets and Yankees all made it to the title round in a span one day shorter than Tampa’s.