They asked their parents to send baseball gloves. When time lurched for Cpl. Cooper Brannan and the 12-man squad he led into war, they retreated to their barracks, grabbed the gloves caked with dust like everything else in Fallujah, Iraq, and remembered, momentarily, what home was like, only for the impediment of a 60-pound flak jacket to snap them to attention. "Talk about bad mechanics," Brannan said Sunday, chuckling, which he could do now because he was at San Diego Padres spring training, and he was here to play for a living, a right-handed pitching prospect among dozens. Two hours earlier he had walked into the Padres' clubhouse and seen a jersey with his name striped across the back.
"This is about the military," said San Diego CEO Sandy Alderson, a former first lieutenant in the Marines and the man responsible for Brannan being a Padre. "This is about all Iraq veterans. This is about people who are wounded. This is a story that makes everybody feel good. And it's predicated on the fact that he can actually throw the baseball.
I might have to become a Padres fan now.