on WSU baseball games during
his three-month tour of duty in
Afghanistan.
Far from home, family — and Shocker baseball. But not so far that the games are totally out of reach. For two loyal Shocker fans, even fighting the war against terrorism in Baghdad or Afghanistan can’t keep them from rooting on their team.
Spc. Lucas May fs ’04, 2nd Battalion, 137th Infantry Regiment of the Kansas Army National Guard, is a member of a security team for high-ranking visitors to Baghdad.
And while he has it, in his own words, “pretty easy here compared to a lot of other grunts,” he was afraid he was going to miss the 2006 Shocker baseball season.
He lives in a nice hotel that was converted from one of Saddam’s mini palaces, and enjoys wireless Internet access. However, the wireless in his room doesn’t pick up streaming broadcasts. So he spent many a night (or early morning) in the operations center listening to Shocker baseball live.
With a nine-hour time difference between Shocker town and Baghdad, those afternoon games often started about the time most of us hit the sheets. And evening games began in the wee hours of the morning.
of a security team for high-ranking
visitors to Baghdad, spent many a
night (or early morning) listening
to Shocker baseball live. May is
pictured here with one of Saddam
Hussein’s palaces in the back-
ground — "the 'Water Palace' as
we call it," May says. "It's official
name is Al Faw, named for some
battle in the Iraq-Iran war, I think."
May says in an e-mail, “I was pretty excited to find that I would not be deprived of live baseball, even in Iraq.”
He raised quite a ruckus during the second championship game against the University of Oklahoma Sooners in the Norman regional. “I think the rest of our living area thought the terrorists had finally tried to assault the base,” May reports, “what with all the commotion I created when Krol cracked it out to left.”
May has been serving in Baghdad since November, picking up “packages” at Baghdad International Airport and escorting them wherever they need to go. (This June, his security team was among those kept on high alert by President George Bush’s five-hour surprise visit to Iraq.)
Says May, “I can’t wait to come home and share the best baseball program in the nation with the best fans!”
Shocker baseball was big in Afghanistan too, thanks to MSgt. Ross Chappell, 184th Air Refueling Wing of the Kansas Air National Guard at McConnell AFB, who listened in on games during his three-month tour of duty.
“It really kept me feeling like I was in touch back home. I had a routine that kept me in touch — goshockers.com was one of the best ways to do it.”
He also had the other guys in his unit following Shocker baseball — whether they wanted to or not. “I printed off game schedules and hung them up all over the place,” Chappell reports. In fact, the shirt he is wearing in the photo above is one he caught that was shot from an air cannon during the 2005 season.
Now safely home, Chappell and his father, Frank ’68, enjoyed watching the Shockers play at Eck Stadium. Frank says, “I didn’t go to Afghanistan with him, but when he got home we didn’t miss a game.”
“The Shocker nation,” Ross says with a laugh, “is growing.”
