BUNDY COLUMN: Marine's death puts games in perspective

On the baseball fields of Central Park in North Myrtle Beach, 9- and 10-year-olds do their best to put smiles on adult faces.

At this travel ball tournament, just like every youth sports event across America, expectations run high from those straddling a coach’s bucket to those sitting in folding chairs behind the backstop to those leaning on a knee in the bleachers.

There are moans when Little Johnny makes an error. There are groans when Johnny strikes out. And there’s screaming when an umpire’s call goes against Johnny or, worse yet, Johnny’s team loses.

For a different perspective, my thoughts shift with the warm breeze off the Atlantic to Stanley, N.C., where I spent some summer days of my youth playing and learning the game.

At the moment, there’s no bickering on the ball fields back home. No time for that.

Nic O’Brien, a kid from my old high school who put down his bat bag upon graduation in 2008 for the Marine Corps, came home from Afghanistan on Saturday in a body bag.

In Sangin, Helmand Province – one of the most violent corridors in the war against terror – O’Brien was killed by a roadside bomb on Thursday. Just two weeks earlier, he had turned 21.

Though I never knew O’Brien, guys back home that I played ball with and who later coached O’Brien say he was a dream.

“Nic was a great athlete, but more than that, he was just a great kid,” Stanley recreation director Tug Deason told the Gaston Gazette, our hometown paper. “He played with us from the time he was 7 until he was 17 or 18. He never gave you any problems.”

At age 13 and 14, O’Brien was on an all-star team that played for a state championship and was coached by Chad Brown, a former teammate of mine.

Chad continued to coach O’Brien as an assistant coach at Easton Gaston High School, where O’Brien played center field and was named defensive player of the year his junior and senior years.

“He was just a jokester — just a loving kid,” Chad told the Gazette. “I knew him as someone who was always having fun. But he was a class kid, too.”

O’Brien also played two seasons of American Legion ball in 2007 and 2008, but passed on a third season of Legion eligibility and an offer to play at Belmont Abbey College to join the Corps.

He will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

“In his short life, he grew to be a class man,” Richard O’Brien, Nic’s dad who also served in the Marine Corps, told the Gazette. “He was a warrior and a hero. And he deserves to be buried beside warriors.”

The champions of the travel ball tournament here on the fields of Central Park will be decided with a full day of games today. The winners get rings, and the intensity level will no doubt be high.

The death of Lance Cpl. Nic O’Brien, though, should be a reality check for what’s taking place here. We’re watching children play a game, and their days of youth are fleeting. Win or lose, these should be times we enjoy most, not times of strife.

And we should be thankful for the men and women who fight to give us that freedom.

E-mail sports editor Sam Bundy at sbundy@florencenews.com