If you're a sucker for feel-good NFL training camp stories, you'll want to hear about Tony Fein.
Fein, 27, is an undrafted rookie linebacker out of Mississippi who's trying to catch on with the Ravens this summer.
Depending on whom you talk to, he either has no shot to make the team or the kind of shot you have of hitting the trifecta at the track tomorrow.
If he's lucky, he could stick as a practice-squad player.
This would be bitterly disappointing to Fein. But it won't kill him. And that's fine with him, since the man has already seen death up close as an Army combat veteran in Iraq, where he served for a year as a 19 Delta recon scout.
Compared with that line of work, this one's a day at the beach.
"Football gets tough, with the heat and physical demands," he said after practice Sunday at sweltering McDaniel College. "But at least I know I'm going to be alive today. And tomorrow."
There were times, Fein said, when he wasn't sure he would make it out of Baghdad.
He won't give you war stories, saying simply, "I really don't like to rehash things like that."
But as a recon scout, you're the first to see the enemy, a particularly harrowing assignment in the swirling chaos of an urban battlefield like Baghdad.
"You're the eyes and ears of the commander," he said of recon work. "You're out there assessing what the enemy has, the capabilities, the numbers and stuff like that."
You also get shot at and try to tiptoe around roadside bombs, which he said he did while also living through a lot of "urban warfare stuff, close-quarter-combat stuff."
"I was lucky to come out unscathed," he said, "so I'm grateful for that every day."
And he's grateful to the Ravens for giving him another chance to be an NFL football player, something he has dreamed about since he was a little kid.
Fein has the kind of football back story you could turn into a Hollywood movie. After starring as a quarterback and linebacker at South Kitsap High in Port Orchard, Wash., he worked as a roofer for a year before joining the Army to make money for college.
He served for 3 1/2 years. When he got out, he played football at Scottsdale (Ariz.) Community College and won junior college All-America honors, ranking No. 2 nationally at his position.
From there it was on to Ole Miss, where he finished second on the team in tackles his junior year.
