This is a tale of two brothers.

And one mother.

Eric Nielsen, who turned 25 this month, is a Blue Jays minor leaguer spending October and November in paradise -- he just finished playing for the Honolulu Sharks in the Hawaiian League.

His younger brother, Ryan, 21, is as close to hell on earth as anyone can get. Ryan is a specialist, a step above private, in the U.S. Army stationed in Iraq.

"It's two kids enjoying what they do," said their mom, Anne, from Hawaii on an off-day tour of Pearl Harbor last week.

"Ryan sent us a message recently: 'Don't send anything to Mosul, we're going to Baghdad.' You hear that and your heart tenses. Here we are flying from Las Vegas to Hawaii. It's two ends of the stick."

On the good end of the stick is outfielder Eric Nielsen, selected in the 12th round by the Jays in the 2004 draft after hitting .402 with 16 homers and 87 RBIs in 61 games for the Mountain West-conference-winning UNLV Hustlin' Rebels.

He spent the remainder of the 2004 summer at single-A Auburn, the next year at single-A Lansing and this summer at single-A Dunedin where he hit .286 with six homers and 47 RBIs in 115 games.

"Compare Lansing in early April with Hawaii? Hmmm, well it doesn't compare," Nielsen said. "At Lansing in early April some games there was snow on the ground.

"The weather in Hawaii, you can't beat. There are so many things to look at, the palm trees, the water, the beaches."

On the sticky, dangerous end of the stick, brother Ryan is eating dust in Iraq. He has had his picture taken in front of Saddam Hussein's palace.

"I try not to worry about my mom but I do," said the voice on the AT@T connection from Iraq, who introduced himself on the phone as "Eric's little brother."

"I try to concentrate on stuff here. I know mom has friends with sons in the military, I don't know how much she talks with them. She goes through a lot when Eric is away for ball ... and now I'm away."

But for a mom clicking on a boxscore to see an 0-for-4 has to be less stressful than watching CNN nightly ... fearing the worst.

"I get too upset, so I don't watch a lot of TV," Anne said. She adds that her sons have become: "Really close and support each other."

A writer and photographer from the Tacoma News Tribune spent time with Ryan's platoon, now being considered for a medal of valour.

"Ryan is getting recognition," Anne said. "We'll go seven to 10 days without hearing from Ryan, then he'll call someone every day for a few days. You just hope he contacts someone.

"Ryan looks at boxscores to check on his brother."

Anne, a bookkeeper, and her husband William, a physician's assistant, have five children and live in Henderson, Nev., north of Vegas.

John, 26, works for America West airlines, Kyle is 19, Katlyn is seven and Erin is five.

The family keeps tabs on the troops and the Jays.

Usually Ryan, a M249 SAW gunner, is one of the first out of their Stryker combat vehicle, looking for insurgents.

Ryan says the Stryker is like a tank but much faster and carries more people "as many as 11 or 12."

"You think you have an idea what it's going to be like in a combat zone until see it with your own eyes ... it's like WOW!" Ryan said. "The most impressive thing is how everyone backs everyone up. Our guys show a lot of heart.

"We haven't lost anyone ... knock, knock."

On the other end of the receiver, listening to this brave young man -- and thinking of your toughest experiences as a 21-year-old -- you can't help but quietly knock the wooden part of your desk.

"After this I'm going to go college, the Army taught me a lot about options, maybe I should have listened to my parents and gone to college, but I enlisted," Ryan said. "The Army gives you maturity. I already had some from Eric.

"Originally, Eric didn't think I would make it through basic training. Now he says I'm one of his heroes."

Heroes come in all shapes and sizes. Ryan says he stands 5-foot-9. Eric the outfielder is listed at 6-foot, 222 pounds.

On June 29, Ryan shipped out. The next month Eric's offence took off to the point he won the Jays' organizational player of the month honours for July. Eric hit .420 and had a .532 on-base percentage.

"I don't know if it was coincidental with him going over there, but as soon as he left, I annihilated the ball," Eric said. "Ryan put things in perspective. I've got it pretty good. He's there going through things to allow me to play. Those guys are living in trenches, trying to stay alive."

Eric says now a bad day is left at the park. Instead he thinks about "guys, missing their families, wives and kids."

"Lots of players take failure to heart, if I go 0-for-4 with three punch outs, I care, but not like before," Eric said. "I'm not going into the tunnel and throw my helmet or bat. I know I can redeem myself with the next at-bat or a play in the field."

A typical day for each brother?

Eric says "since the sun is free," in Hawaii, he'd wake around 10 a.m. for breakfast, go to the beach or the pool for about an hour. For home games at the University of Hawaii field, the bus left Waikiki at 4:15 p.m.

The team stretched at 5:15, then batting practice and game time against the Waikiki Beachboys. Then, a post-game meal was provided by the league and it was on a bus to Waikiki.

Ryan says a typical day varies for his segment of 250-man Fort Lewis Stryker platoon known as "Lightning" headed by Lt. Blake Hall of Lakewood, Wash. They operate combat vehicles, which are similar to eight-wheeled tanks.

Each night they are given a departure time for the next day. His last mission was to leave at 4 a.m., which meant being up an hour before.

They'd be on the road four hours but sometimes "when things happen, we'd stay out as long as six hours extra."

The No. 1 worry for Ryan and his platoon, part of the 2nd battalion of the 3rd Infantry Regiment is IEDs (improvised explosive devices) hidden in pot holes along the road. They explode when a vehicle drives over them. Then there are suicide truck bombs.

The outfielder says he read about Jays outfielder Reed Johnson and his gesture to fly in Staff Sgt. Jimmy Diaz, a childhood friend, to Toronto to see a New York Yankees series in April. Diaz was home from Iraq.

"Some day I hope to make the majors and do for my brother what Reed did for his pal," Eric said. "We're getting paid to play a game we love, they're getting paid to protect us so we can do what we love."

In the off-season Eric works out with Aaron Rowand of the Philadelphia Phillies and Johnson, at 6 a.m. four days a week.

In Ryan's platoon he is one of the only city boys and listens to rap music. Most of the others prefer country music.

Fellow soldiers look at the baseball card of Eric, his proud younger brother flashes.

"Then, they usually ask how come your brother got all the athletic ability," Ryan said with a laugh from Iraq. "All the athleticism went to Eric.

"My younger brother Kyle and I used to tag-team Eric, but we could never beat him up. No one picked on me at high school -- they were afraid of Eric."

Ryan chuckles again when asked how good he was in sports. He played baseball until T-ball, but stopped when players began pitching. He took up wrestling in high school. After breaking his arm, he switched to swimming for a year and returned to wrestling.

"I was talking to my mom recently about Eric and saying how well Eric was doing," Ryan said. "We were both laughing -- I said he's the last one still playing from his high school team and his coach didn't play him all the time."

Eric helped Silverado High School to the state championship in 2000, hitting .462 and he won MVP honours.

"I was home on leave for two weeks in September and showed Eric pictures," Ryan said.

Ryan is not sure when he'll head back home -- his one-year tour of duty is supposed to be up in July of 2007, but the group his platoon replaced stayed a month late, so the same could be true for his group.

Most players, whether they wear big-league or minor-league uniforms idolize someone, a similar swing, someone from their home area, someone who plays the same position, someone they had baseball cards of in a shoe box back home.

"I worry about Ryan all the time, over there looking for insurgents," Eric said. "He's my hero."