Duty, honor and curveballs

By Jeff Passan, Yahoo! Sports
March 5, 2007

PEORIA, Ariz. – 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.

He wanted to cry. He steeled himself.

Brannan had enlisted in the Marine Corps right after high school, learned honor and courage and commitment and Semper Fi, heard bullets whiz by his head, seen friends die, lost his left pinky to a flash-bang grenade. He had lived "in the Bible times," as he liked to say, so for a moment he allowed himself to appreciate the fortuity of this, him, here, sun and grass, in the uniform of a completely different kind.

"You still remember how to put that stuff on?" said Grady Fuson, the Padres' vice president of scouting.

Brannan nodded. He was weaning himself off "yes, sir" and "no, sir," learning to address his superiors by their first names and nicknames.

The last piece of the uniform was his hat. Brannan, 22, slipped it on nice and snug so it would cover his high-and-tight haircut. Officially, he is still a Marine until he receives his honorable discharge on May 31, so he'll stay clean-shaven and hang dog tags in his locker. The Corps is allowing him to complete his duty with the Padres as an ambassador of sorts, proof that there can be success after war.

"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 hope the military sees this as a positive. Because if you look at this, here's an injured Marine in contrast to what's happening at Walter Reed and so forth. After today, he's a ballplayer."

Sixteen months ago, he was just another injured soldier among thousands. Brannan was 20 then and had ascended to squad leader of a dozen men as lance corporal. He was on his second tour of duty, this time in Fallujah, one of Iraq's most dangerous cities.

During a pre-combat inspection before an infantry patrol, one of his charges was short a flash-bang grenade, a device used to stun opposing forces, so Brannan reached into his flak jacket to lend him one.

The grenade exploded, and with it so did his left hand.

Doctors scurried to save what they could. They reattached his thumb and index finger. They could not salvage his pinky, and Brannan needed three major surgeries, three more minor ones and months of occupational therapy to regain use of his hand, which still swells and subsides so often he prefers to wear his wedding band on his right hand.

"I'm pity-partying about a pinky, about my little finger?" Brannan said. "It was then that my mindset changed. I would get better and make a difference.

"I always told my dad I'd make it in baseball. I didn't know how I would."

A mouthy friend, it turns out. On Nov. 10, the Marine Corps birthday, Brannan and Pfc. Jeff Huben were at a San Diego radio station for an event. Alderson showed up, too, as the Padres' military ties go far deeper than just the fatigue-colored uniforms they trot out once a year.

Huben told Alderson that Brannan could really pitch. Brannan begged him off. Huben kept pushing. Brannan had pitched for Highland High in Gilbert, Ariz., and traveled with the All-Marine Corps team, and, hey, there would be no harm in watching him for five minutes, right?

"It didn't take that much to push the right buttons with me," Alderson said. "It was right after they played the Marine Corps Hymn on the radio show. The timing was excellent."

Soon thereafter, Brannan worked out for area scout Brendan Hause. His fastball touched 93 mph. That was enough to convince the Padres to offer him a minor-league contract, and when Brannan went to Petco Park to sign the letter of intent – he is still property of the Corps, remember – he said, "They treated me like a first-round draft pick."

Now, they'll try to think of him as just another prospect. Brannan stands 6-foot-4 and 235 pounds. The Padres like his curveball. They sent him to a pitching coach in the San Diego area to learn how to pitch again. He'll probably stay here for extended spring training, then report to the Arizona Rookie League for his first organized season.

And yet the Padres know Brannan is different, that he slips his ring finger in the glove hole made for the pinky and adjusts the rest of his fingers accordingly, that sometimes he'll go to grip a water bottle and it'll slip out of his hand, that nightmares occasionally stun him awake.

He should be a firefighter. That's what Brannan thinks sometimes. That was the plan upon his discharge. He would serve the public like his father, Linwood, a police officer.

"Your job," said Lindsay Brannan, Cooper's wife, "is playing baseball."

So he left their rented apartment on Sunday morning to do just that. It was the Padres minor leaguers' first official workout, the start of Brannan's new career. He'll make $1,000 a month. He'll sweat through a desert summer. He'll try to distinguish himself again, a face among many in an unfamiliar place.

And he'll do it in another uniform he's proud to wear.

"It's not so much if I make it," Brannan said. "It's when I make it."




Cpl. Cooper Brannan, right, accepts
congratulations from Pvt. 1st Class Jeffrey
Huben, who was also wounded in Iraq Tuesday
at Marine Corps Recruitment Station in
San Diego.



Cpl. Cooper Brannan forces back the tears for a
moment as he remembers his comrades in arms
while accepting a contract with the Padres
Tuesday.



Cpl. Cooper Brannan shakes hands with Padres
Vice President for Scouting and Player
Development Grady Fuson just after handing
Brannan a Padres contract Tuesday at Marine
Corps Recruitment Depot in San Diego.




Marine corporal plans to pitch for Padres

By: BRIAN HIRO - Staff Writer

SAN DIEGO ---- Wearing his new Padres camouflage jersey over his military fatigues, Marine Cpl. Nels Cooper Brannan stood at a podium Tuesday morning, overwhelmed by emotion.

Before paying gratitude to the Padres executives responsible for the improbable news conference at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Brannan tried to salute his fallen comrades ---- soldiers, like him, who fought bravely for their country in the war in Iraq. He faltered. The words became lodged in his throat.

"They say Marines don't cry, right?" Brannan said, his soft tone belying his strapping 6-foot-4, 235-pound frame.

The dozen or so fellow Marines in the room were prepared to cut Brannan a break. After all, it's not every day that one of their own ---- in this case, an infantry squad leader who served two tours of duty in Iraq and nearly lost his left hand in a grenade explosion ---- gets a chance to play Major League Baseball.

"This is a great story," Brig. Gen. Angela Salinas said. "I want to keep the rights to the book and movie."

On March 2, the 22-year-old Brannan ---- who goes by Cooper ---- will report to the Padres' spring training camp in Peoria, Ariz., and try to stick with the organization as a right-handed pitcher. The gathering Tuesday was to announce that Brannan had agreed to terms on a minor-league contract, although he won't be able to sign it until his discharge paperwork is final in late May.

"It's kind of hard to explain," Brannan said. "When you're over there (in Iraq) living one day at a time, you can never imagine something like this. Knowing I was serving my country and now I have this opportunity, it's so overwhelming I can't put it into words."

The Padres pride themselves on being the team of the military. When they honor Marine units from Camp Pendleton during Sunday afternoon games at Petco Park, the crowd noise is as loud as after any home run or strikeout.

And the club's friendliness toward the armed forces is only bolstered by the presence of Chief Executive Officer Sandy Alderson, a former Marine officer who served in Vietnam.

Alderson beamed like a proud father throughout the news conference, and he admitted afterward that he was happy to give a Marine a shot to realize a dream. Yet Alderson insisted that the signing is no mere publicity stunt from the franchise that once invited country star Garth Brooks to spring training.

Rather, the Padres said, Brannan ---- a standout pitcher and football defensive end when he attended Highland High in Gilbert, Ariz. ---- earned his contract by his performance at a tryout early last month at Point Loma Nazarene. Supervising the session was Brendan Hause, a Carlsbad-based Padres scout who covers San Diego and Orange counties.

"Right away you saw the good physique," Hause said. "Right away you could see the drive. He definitely exceeded all my expectations. It's going to be exciting to see how quickly he makes up for lost time."

Brannan said he received interest from junior colleges out of high school, but that he decided to enlist in the Marines after graduation as a means of straightening himself out. He was deployed to Hitt, Iraq, in February 2004 and served for eight months before returning to Twentynine Palms.

Redeployed to Fallujah in September 2005, Brannan led a squad of 12 Marines. During a precombat inspection on Nov. 1, he reached to retrieve a flash-bang grenade from his belt, and it malfunctioned, blowing up in his hand.

Brannan underwent one surgery in Iraq and three more at Naval Medical Center San Diego. Doctors used a skin graft to sew his left thumb and ring finger back on, but his pinkie could not be saved.

"I'm very blessed to have what I have on my hand," said Brannan, who's doubly blessed by the birth of a daughter, Brooke Taylor, to he and his wife, Lindsay, last Friday.

His competitive itch returned during a rehabilitation that lasted more than a year, and last spring he pitched for the All-Marine Corps and USA Military All-Star teams. He actually dominated, although the modest Brannan would never advertise that.

Indeed, he might never have gotten his big break if not for a bit of salesmanship by a Marine buddy. Last November, Alderson was a guest on a sports radio segment promoting the annual Marine Birthday Ball, and Brannan and his friend, Pfc. Jeffrey Huben, were among the soldiers invited to join him.

After they were off the air, Huben approached Alderson and told him about Brannan's ability.

"This guy is way too shy," Huben said, pointing to Brannan. "I got the conversation going. That was all it took. It was just like dominoes falling into place."

Said Alderson: "It was easy for me to offer a tryout. Our scouts felt he had some real talent."

It's a talent that Brannan has been honing in regular workouts with Poway High pitching coach Dom Johnson, who has helped the raw pitcher iron out his mechanics and increase his velocity by about 5 to 7 mph, into the low 90s.

When he heads to spring training next month, however, Brannan will be the center of attention not for his arsenal of pitches but for his inspirational background. It's safe to say he'll be the only young prospect who will be able to tell literal war stories.

"He may never be a Trevor Hoffman," said Col. Matt Redfern, Brannan's commanding officer, referring to the Padres' longtime closer. "But Trevor Hoffman will never be a Marine corporal."

-- Contact staff writer Brian Hiro at b_hiro@hotmail.com.