Home plate's a little piece of home

Sporting News, The, August 2, 2004 by Dave Kindred

Rawboned, lean, about 6 feet tall.

Looked like a shortstop, moved like one, used to be one.

Now he's an outfielder, and he laughed when he explained why. More on that in a minute.

He had been awake most of 24 hours. He started the day on the far side of the world. With other soldiers, he left Iraq. In civilian clothes, he flew from Kuwait to Ireland. There he changed into the U.S. Army's desert khakis. There was a combat patch "1" under an American flag on his right shoulder; on his chest, his name, NELL. Now he stood at gate G5 in Chicago's O'Hare Airport. Waiting.

Waiting to go home.

After eight months in Iraq.

Ten miles from Saddam Hussein's spider hole.

He would be home for two weeks.

Then back to Iraq.

Still.

Home.

"Let me buy you a drink," another traveler said to Army

Specialist Brandon Nell, and they did that, and then Nell boarded American Eagle flight 4379, his seat 18A, the last row in the little plane, and I told him about a basketball coach who always took that last seat: "He said he'd never heard of a plane backing into a mountain" and Nell said, "Good, and not many mountains where we're going."

From the hellish desert of northern Iraq to the world's sweetest farmland in central Illinois ...

Over there, lifeless browns as far as the eye is brave enough to see.

Back here, a landscape of greens, corn and beans and grass forever, if once so familiar as to go unnoticed, now so beautiful as to seem a mother's blanket.

When American Eagle 4379 landed at Peoria, its flight attendant asked passengers to allow "one of America's finest" to walk off first. Brandon Nell did just that, to applause, and then stood in the airport lobby for a half-hour hugging family and friends.

Twenty-three years old, Nell was a construction worker in Pekin, Ill., until August of 2003 when his Army reserve unit was called to active duty. In November he went to Kuwait en route to Mosul, Iraq. With the 24th Quartermaster Company's 724th transportation detachment, he now does work that would be routine at home.

He drives a truck.

"An 18-wheeler carrying fuel," he said.

Those words can throw a chill on you. There aren't many more dangerous jobs right now than driving a fuel truck out of Mosul on Highway 1, a north-south road running past Baghdad.

On April 9, Greg Goodrich, a soldier stationed with Nell, died in an ambush as he escorted a fuel convoy west of Baghdad. On May 1, another soldier from the 24th Quartermaster, Trevor Wine, died when his armored vehicle ran over what the military calls an IED, an improvised explosive device. Two other reservists traveling with Goodrich remain unaccounted for.

"Every mission, two Humvees go in front of me," Brandon Nell said, "and one comes along behind." There is a .50-caliber machine gun above him, and both he and a soldier riding with him in the cab carry light machine guns known as "squaws," squad automatic weapons. Nell said that on 87 missions covering 11,000 miles he has come under fire four times: from a rocket-propelled grenade, two IED's and a mortar shell.

He is an athlete, good enough in high school to think he might be a professional baseball player. On June mornings in Mosul, Nell joined his buddies in front of television sets to watch the Armed Forces network broadcast of the NBA Finals. He said they keep up with sports news, usually through SportsCenter.

Mostly, though, they prefer to do it themselves.

So they found a piece of desert to make their own.

They moved sand, dirt and stones to clear the land for a softball field.

Then they put HESCOs to a use that their designers may not have had in mind. HESCOs are welded steel wire mesh containers; filled with dirt, they become barricades. Nell's company placed maybe 60 HESCOs in an arc from foul line to foul line--voila, an outfield fence in Iraq, 316 feet to center, 301 to left, 299 to right.

Let's call it the Mosul Major League. There are nine teams from the 44th Corps Support Battalion: medics, truckers, special forces, ordnance, mess halls, headquarters.

Nell said he has played 15 games and is hitting .625 with 22 home runs. "Four over the HESCO's," he said, "and 18 inside the park." A smile. "I can run."

Now, about playing shortstop ...

"Nope," he said. "Too many bad hops off those rocks. Even in center, I took one upside the head."

Back home before returning to Iraq for two months to finish his duty, Nell played softball, went bowling and twice played golf. His father, Don, who did his Army duty in Vietnam in the terrible years 1967 and '68, had an idea of what his son would want during two weeks home.

"A cold beer," Don Nell said, "and a warm woman."

So ...?

"I imagine he got the one, and the other, if he got it, he's not telling his mother."

Brandon Nell heard that. He laughed. He said, "Yep."