Like Looking In A Mirror
Both the men looked at each other with nervous glances. They were waiting for the DNA results to come back. They looked exactly the same, but how did they also share the same name- Brady Feigl. They had never even met each other before.
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But when they finally got back their test results their pulses started to race. Did their parents have a secret that they weren’t telling them?
Brady 1
Brady Feigl was born in Dallas, Texas, and remembers always having a passion for baseball. We’ll call him Brady 1 from now on so no one gets confused.
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All through school Brady 1 got straight A’s and did well with anything athletic. It was as if he was born to play baseball. His mother was so proud of him, but did she have something to hide?
Brady 2
Brady 2 was born in Houston, Texas, and also felt drawn to Baseball at an early age. He had also been adopted from a young age and had loving parents. Growing up he was the class clown that did many foolish things.
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Brady knew he was adopted and sometimes wondered what his birth parents were like. He also wondered if he had any siblings. But as soon as he met Brady 1 he knew everything he wondered about would finally be answered.
A Mutual Passion
Both of the boys had one big thing in common – they both loved baseball. They would continue to play into their teens and even beyond that. Brady number 1 studied political science while Brady 2 studied accounting.
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Both Texans were good students and got great marks. But they both wanted to pursue their favorite passion – baseball. The two finally met when they both managed to both be accepted onto the Texas Rangers baseball team in Arlington.
Identical
The coach laughed himself into stitches when he saw that they looked exactly the same. But soon he would see the kinds of problems that come with not being able to tell them apart.
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The other issue was that they shared a name too. So he’d call one and both would arrive. It was too confusing for everyone. Coach Johnson decided that they needed to do something that would shock both of the Brady’s.
No Coincidence
Their coach was fed up with the confusion as it was really affecting their practices and undoubtedly their games: “you guys really have to figure out if you’re related or not because you’re both equally annoying!
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The two Bradys looked at one another and had an unsettling thought: maybe there was more to them just looking alike and having the same name. It couldn’t just be a coincidence…could it?
Jokes
The Bradys’ baseball team loved to joke about the redheaded “twins.” They began to call them Fred and George – after Ron Weasley’s twin redheaded brothers in Harry Potter – to try and differentiate them.
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Because Brady 2 was the class clown of the pair, the Bradys played up the joke, which everyone found hilarious. That was until the joke became too serious for comfort.
Too Close For Comfort
The Fred and George jokes continued among their teammates, but the Bradys grew more and more uncomfortable.
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They began to give serious consideration to the idea that they may actually be related. When one teammate joked that the pair shared the same mom, the joke began to go too far. They had to find out the truth.
Long-Lost Brothers?
The two Bradys sat down together after their teammate’s cutting jokes and discussed the possibility that they might actually be brothers or even twins. They were, after all, the same height, they both wore glasses and even had a similar sense of humor.
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Their only difference was their eye color, Brady 2’s eyes were blue and Brady 1’s were hazel, however, Brady 2 was adopted and Brady 1’s mother had blue eyes. When they were offered an opportunity to see if their parents had lied, they jumped at the opportunity.
The Similarities Don’t End
In 2018, Inside Edition caught wind of the doppelgangers and arranged an interview with them.
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During the interview, the Bradys revealed yet another mind-blowing commonality: they both had the same surgical procedure on their elbows, and it was even performed by the same doctor! In fact, that was when the Bradys found out about each other.
The Same Procedure
The surgeon who performed the surgery on both Bradys, Dr. Dave Andrews, was confused by the doppelgangers. He called Brady 2, thinking he was Brady 1. “The way we found about it actually (was through) Dr. Andrews’ office,’ explained Brady 2.
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“He’s the guy who (performed) both of our surgeries.” So, Brady 2 already knew that there was someone out there who had the same name as him before the pair met.
Becoming Famous
“I was probably six or seven months out of surgery and their office called our trainer and said, ‘Hey, when’s Brady reporting for surgery? Is he getting down here tomorrow?’ He was like, ‘He had it six months ago. What are you talking about?'” Brady 2 explained.
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And when Inside Edition aired the story of the two Bradys, people lost their minds.
Causing A Stir
Now, everyone knew about the two Bradys and all their similarities. “The week that it hit TV, my phone blew up,” Brady 2 said. The constant notifications he was getting started to become so intrusive that had to put it on airplane mode for eight hours at a time.
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Still, the buzz on social media grew and grew. Everyone insisted that “they had to be related” or were even “long-lost twins who were separated at birth.”
Help From Fans
The two matching players had become fan favorites with the Texas Rangers fans and everyone who saw their interview. Their fans were so obsessed with the possibility that the two were related that they set up a Kickstarter to pay for a DNA test.
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The Kickstarter reached its target and the players were approached about doing the test. The two men agreed to it and knew that this was the defining moment of their relationship.
The Moment Everyone Had Been Waiting For
The two Bradys had created such a stir that Inside Edition returned to interview them for the second time in a follow-up segment.
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The cameras rolled as they captured the moment the Bardys placed their saliva samples in the test tubes and put them back into the plastic seal they had arrived in. It was a tense moment.
German Ancestry
In the interview, one of the Bradys explained that he had been to Ellis Island and had looked their shared name up. It turned out that some Fiegels had come to America from Germany, so it was very likely that they had descended from that German family.
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But that revelation hadn’t led them any closer to the truth. The two Bradys were more curious now than ever before.
The Results
Brady and Brady gave saliva samples and their tests were sent away for analysis. They knew that the results would be life-changing. They had been dogged with rumors of being twins separated at birth for years.
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They were visibly nervous as they read the first results. They couldn’t believe it. The results showed them that they did have many similarities.
The DNA Test
When they looked through their ancestry DNA, one of the Bradys revealed the top result of his ancestry, and the other Brady was shocked.
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The two Feigl’s could see that they both had the exact same amount of Germanic ancestry at 53% each. That was most likely where their matching surname came from. So, were they twins?
Differences
However, the similarities stopped at the Bradys’ shared German ancestry. Brady 2 had 2% Irish/Scottish ancestry, while Brady 1 had 10%. So, they finally knew that they definitely were not twins.
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The two players were taken aback by the results but were glad their parents hadn’t lied to them. However, they were still connected in one very important way.
Connected Forever
The two men have become very close friends throughout the years and still have the nicknames Fred and George, which their coach now uses to differentiate them. Their experience of having a DNA test together has bonded them forever.
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Despite not actually being blood-related, the redheaded baseball stars still consider themselves to be brothers.
