Signed and delivered
As I was roaming the throngs of autograph seekers yesterday at the Red Sox minor league complex here, seeking reaction to the latest Manny affair and the Red Sox’ reluctance to ink Curt Schilling, I ran into Mark Bowman, who, as it turned out, had already gotten more significant inscriptions than any lucky person who might have been able to obtain the signatures of both David Ortiz and Daisuke Matsuzaka on the same day.
Bowman, 36, who was with his father and nine-year-old daughter Brooke in the shadow of Eddie Powposki Field at the Sox developmental complex, returned last October from Iraq, where he served as a Sgt. First Class in the First Strike Brigade, out of Fort Luis, Wash. Originally a native of Salem, NH and lifelong Red Sox fan, Bowman ran into Red Sox reliever — and well-known supporter of American troops overseas — Mike Timlin during a game in Seattle back in 2004, just before he shipped out.
“He had a ball signed from [all the pitchers in the] bullpen that I carried with me in my pocket,” said Bowman, who was stationed in Mosul, Iraq. “The whole year over there, every time I got blown up, that ball was in my pocket.”
And there it stayed, even as his tank was getting walloped by improvised explosive devices. Even as Bowman suffered six concussions, including one of the two worst on April 4, 2005, the day before he was due to ship home. He laid under medical supervision the next day, knowing he might have been just one evasive measure from being back in Washington with his daughter, watching the Red Sox in his living room.
“My soldiers made sure we didn’t lose that ball,” he said. “So whenever we had the opportunity of not getting shot at, or just finished getting shot at, we took it out and took a quick picture and put it back in our pockets.”
The year that the Red Sox won the World Series, Bowman’s tank included a driver from Burlington and a gunner from Connecticut, trying to find out the scores of October at any chance they could, when shrapnel wasn’t flying about their heads.
When Keith Foulke tossed the final out in Game 4 of the World Series to Doug Mientkiewicz, Bowman and his troop, which was just coming off duty at the time, got to witness it on TV. Until the power went out a whole three seconds into the celebration.
Many of us have pictures of where we were at the moment, be it at a public house or with friends and family. Bowman has a photo of himself in his Red Sox cap in front of a blank TV.
The ball, the same one that Timlin had the 2004 bullpen sign for him, was nearby.
“They’re out there protecting what we’re doing,” Timlin said yesterday, “and we have the ability to walk around the street and be free. That’s what they’re out there for — protecting that fact. No one is coming into our country and walking around with an AK-47 or driving a tank over a neighbor’s house, and nobody saying anything about it. That stuff is going on over there all the time. There’s no search and seizure at my house; that stuff happens over there. These guys are doing that to protect that over here and any small gesture that we can do to make them feel like they have a part of home, then so be it.”
That thought rang true as I was asking Bowman how he felt about Ramirez not reporting, the thought of a $20 million player not showing up on time seeming even more ridiculous after talking with the veteran over just a 10-minute period.
“The simple things that they cry and whine about, yeah, it’s frustrating, knowing what I go through,” Bowman said. “And I get paid very little, enough to take care of my family, and that’s about it. And they get paid to play a game and have all the extra toys they want, but they’re not getting shot at or blown up.
“We don’t want to hear you cry about it. You want to hear crying, go talk to my solider who got paralyzed when he got shot through the throat. You can talk to him about crying. He was 21 at the time. So he’s never going to have the life that they’ve got, and he doesn’t cry about it. Big difference.”
On leave in 2005, Bowman caught up with Timlin again, and showed him pictures and video of the troops’ ordeal in Iraq. Among the photos, no doubt, was one of Bowman, Red Sox cap on his oft-concussed head, the bullpen ball nearby, cheering in front of a blank TV as the Red Sox celebrated at Busch Stadium.
“We should probably put them on a pedestal,” said Timlin, who often wore a camouflage T-shirt beneath his Red Sox whites in support of the troops. “There are a lot of guys who are crying over petty stuff, who if they were put in different situations they wouldn’t think that way. Until you are put in that situation or were required to act that way in that situation … petty things are, I guess, extremely important to some people.”
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