DURING OUR THREE-MONTH adventure in Baghdad, Jeff and I were often asked, "What the hell are you guys doing here?" The answer was complicated, but for starters, we sincerely wanted to go over there and help. The less exalted motive stemmed from our shared hatred of the New York Yankees.

Jeff and I, both in our twenties, are Boston-area college dropouts. We're also Red Sox fans to the point of painful cliché, and since 1999 the Sox had provided us with decent money selling YANKEES SUCK T-shirts outside Fenway Park. A friend and I started making them that year; they've been a Fenway staple ever since.

For Jeff and me, the actual road to Baghdad had started in section 336 of Yankee Stadium on the night of October 16, 2003—Game 7 of that year's American League Championship Series between the Sox and the Yankees. The Sox were ahead going into the eighth inning. But then the Yankees rallied to tie, and in the bottom of the 11th the Pinstripes prevailed when Aaron Boone blasted a game-winning home run into the left-field stands, not far from where we sat.

The next afternoon, hungover and heartbroken, Jeff and I woke up in our Brooklyn loft. (Weary of Boston's post-college social scene, we'd migrated to New York in 2003.) We retreated to the rooftop, which offered a great view of Manhattan.

"Must we endure another painful winter?" Jeff said. "I can't. I have to leave."

"New York?"

"The whole East Coast. America, even. I'm over it. I don't know. Maybe go to the Middle East."

For the past few years, thanks largely to our YANKEES SUCK income, Jeff and I had used the off-season to travel. We'd already been to some 60-odd countries each, but we'd grown tired of the Lonely Planet vibe. We never wanted to meet another Dutchman who liked Goa trance music and Ecstasy; we were sick of Thailand's fake exoticism, Guatemala's "culture," and beaches in remote backpacker hot spots.

Having grown up in the D.C. area (Jeff) and Massachusetts (me), we have politics in our blood, so we wanted to go somewhere that mattered, a place where we could observe, firsthand, that holographic concept known as the Global War on Terrorism. Thus, through a combination of political curiosity, a willingness to work for nothing, and our enduring love of bad schemes, we got serious about going to Iraq. I recall saying to Jeff, "We can stay home and do nothing—blow money at bars and sleep until noon. Or we can go see what interests us most."

"You're right," he said. "Hemingway didn't stay home. Orwell didn't." A date was set. We'd spend New Year's 2004 in Tel Aviv, then press on to Iraq.