The Cincinnati Enquirer

He asked her to marry him in February 2003, a Saturday sunrise in full bloom. They sat on a bench by the river in Covington, Great American Ball Park looming like a kept promise. Jeff Brown had glued Scrabble tiles to a game board: WILL YOU MARRY ME. He knelt and opened the board. Suzy Nagle said yes.

As he slid the diamond solitaire on her finger, Jeff Brown said, "Every time we go to a Reds game, we'll remember this moment."

You could say he's a big fan.

Suzy Brown, 27 shows off a picture of her husband, Jeff, who is currently serving in Iraq . (Jeff Swinger/The Cincinnati Enquirer)

"Completely obsessed," Suzy says.

Brown collects baseballs. Autographed baseballs, baseballs hit foul, baseballs marking big occasions. He got one during batting practice at Great American last summer. His friends signed it. Brown has it with him now, in the truck he drives between Kuwait and Baghdad, hauling heavy equipment to American soldiers. His "lucky ball," Brown calls it.

It's a long way from proposing on a riverbank to commanding a transportation unit across Iraq. Not so long, though, that the gap can't be bridged by a baseball.

"Since convoys get hit a lot, it's pretty tense most of the time," Army 1st Lt. Jeff Brown says. He is from Northern Kentucky, a Dixie High grad, Xavier class of 1997. He e-mails me every so often, asking about the Reds. I send him the daily game notes the team provides the press. "I'm enjoying it while it lasts," Brown wrote Tuesday, when the Reds were tied for first place in the NL Central.

Only the edgy desperation of war could produce the mad and wonderful juxtaposition of an e-mail from a soldier 5,000 miles away that begins with "convoys get hit a lot" and ends with "the Cubs' pitching is crazy good." But that is where we are.

On April 17, Brown's tent mate and good friend, Lt. Rob Henderson of Bowling Green, Ky., was killed in an ambush of small arms fire. Henderson did the same job Brown does. His wife is pregnant with their first child. "It's scary to think about dying," Brown wrote me not long after that, "but even more to think you might not get back to the life you left."

Two realities for soldiers

Being a soldier involves two realities: Over There and Back Home.

Over There is a joyless place of duty, caution and staying alive. Back Home is a mythical place of cold beer and ballgames. "I can't wait to sit on my couch and watch the Reds games on Fox Sports!" Brown wrote this week. Back Home grows more mythical every day you're Over There.

Jeff Brown will be home on furlough for two weeks, June 29-July 11, a personal hurricane eye. He wants to go to as many Reds games as he can. His friend and Xavier classmate, Bryan Kirby, says Brown will attend the Reds game against Cleveland on July 4. Kirby suggested his friend throw out the first pitch that day. He asked me to see about that.

"It seems perfect," Kirby wrote in an e-mail.

It is. It is perfect.

Baseball is a game for pausing, reclining, sitting back, looking back. Appreciating. It's our best game for that. It's our only game for that. As Brown writes, "The game doesn't change as much as you do, so I guess in that way, it's comforting. I like the slow pace. It's a way to mark time gone by."

He attended Game 6 of the 1990 NLCS, when the Reds beat Pittsburgh for the National League pennant. He was there in 1988, the day Pete Rose shoved umpire Dave Pallone and earned a 30-day suspension. He has been to seven Opening Days, the last four in a row before this year. He skipped school as a 15-year-old to go to the World Series celebration on Fountain Square in 1990.

He frets over his team from his base in Kuwait.

"I guess what I feel when driving is a constant nervousness," Brown wrote this week. "Bombs can be anything on the road. (They) could be hidden in the trash, roadkill, a pile of rocks, just anything can be one."

What his wife, Suzy, says is, "If I've gotten an e-mail from him, I feel safe to watch the news."

Family of Reds fans

Brown's mom, Susan Storer, says her son's passion for the Reds is hereditary. Her grandfather wouldn't leave the house if the Reds were playing. "His trusty old radio was always next to his chair," Storer wrote in an e-mail this week.

Her father took Susan and her brother to many games at Crosley Field. Jeff's father and uncle kept the tradition. Game as heirloom. Signed baseball as totem and token of faith. "We all need something to hang onto, especially Jeff," his mother wrote.

Last year, Jeff and Suzy Brown went to more Reds games than she can remember. "How many, give or take?" I asked. "How many were there?" she said. "If there was a game and he was off work, we went." Jeff insists on being there when the gates open.

He has a bat autographed by Pete Rose and books about perfect games. Tom Browning signed one. He has a box of David Cone baseball cards, Cone being another perfect-game pitcher. "So much baseball stuff," Suzy said.

We need our games during times like this because the games are a stitch in our fabric. They remind us of who we are. They're part of why Lt. Jeff Brown is in Iraq. They're a bit of why he runs supplies over roads evil with bombs and snipers.

"I thought I had perspective before this experience, but this just increases a million times what's important in life," Brown wrote. "There's so little that really needs worrying about. Can't wait to simply drive my own car, buy a beer and sit and watch a game!"

The Reds do well by the military. Chief operating officer John Allen is a decorated veteran who was wounded in Vietnam. This spring, the team has mailed an autographed team flag to a local solider serving in Iraq. They salute Pfc. Matt Maupin nightly on the scoreboard. Yellow ribbons soon will adorn all the gates.

Army 1st Lt. Jeff Brown will be at Great American Ball Park July 4. He'll throw out the first pitch. Go. Cheer. Salute. Pray. Celebrate Jeff Brown, and who we are. Celebrate who we are.

Remember what we have. What we've always had. It's a small reason we fight.

E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com