An insecure young man drafted into the United States Army in 1968 at the height of the American war in Vietnam finds himself adrift in Mannheim, Germany, an assigned detour from combat made possible by his talent at baseball, one that years earlier had found him opposing--and besting--the eventual Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver. Although his deployment in Germany, rather than in the bloody rice patties of Vietnam is nothing less than fortuitous...