Fred Toucher Almost Had the Scoop on Tom Brady’s Baby

The birth of Tom Brady's daughter, Vivian Lake, was an international event that Toucher almost broke.

Late last week, Fred Toucher received an email from an account he’d never seen before. “You didn’t hear it from me,” the anonymous sender wrote, “but Tom Brady had a daughter.” Toucher, who co-hosts the Toucher & Rich show on the Sports Hub, immediately deleted it. “It didn’t occur to me that it would be any kind of deal at all,” he said.

By Friday, news of the birth of Brady and Gisele Bündchen’s daughter, Vivian Lake, had trickled out. The Globe’s Mark Shanahan appeared to have it first. Here’s his item:

“We’re told that Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and his supermodel wife, Gisele Bündchen, welcomed their second child Wednesday night, a bouncing baby girl named Vivian. This marks the third child for Brady, who has a 2-year-old son, Benjamin, with Gisele, and a 5-year-old son, John, with actress Bridget Moynahan. Brady and Gisele confirmed they were expecting in August, and the rumored arrival came days before Ben celebrates his birthday on Saturday. There was no word on whether Gisele went with a water birth again this time. We wish the happy family the best.”

Not sure how it’s possible these days, but it’s easy to forget that Brady is an international celebrity. For the first few years of his career, he was mythologized as an everyman QB, a normal guy who happened to have a few Super Bowl rings. Thankfully for Patriots fans, Brady is (and was) the opposite of normal. Plus, he married someone more famous than him on an international scale. So that means he’ll end up in the tabloids when he and his wife have a kid. Us Weekly even deemed the birth “Breaking News.”

After mentioning the email he deleted, Toucher got a playful earful from sports update guy Jon Wallach and fill-in co-host/WBZ sports anchor Dan Roche. Getting the scoop, they told him, might’ve resulted in some national recognition. “They had visions of Dateline,” Toucher said. “I’m not above all that. But honestly, who gives a shit?”