At a young age, twin baseball players Julio and Esteban Pimental leave their home in the Caribbean country of Courteguay for the American major leagues. To the chagrin of the team that employs them, Julio, a winning pitcher, will only throw to his brother, a mediocre player. Despite the distance from their homeland, the brothers' lives, monitored by the mysterious Wizard, continue to be shaped by events there, including regular coups and the outlawing...

"Ted Fullilove, aka Mr. Peanut, is not like other Ivy League grads. He shares an apartment with Goldberg, his beloved battery-operated fish, sleeps on a bed littered with yellow legal pads penned with what he hopes will be the next great American novel, and spends the waning malaise-filled days of the Carter administration at Yankee Stadium, waxing poetic while slinging peanuts to pay the rent. When Ted hears the news that his estranged father, Marty,...

When Xavier's father returns to Boston after serving ten years in federal prison, tensions quickly mount and Xavier's anger explodes on the baseball field, making it less likely that he will achieve his dream of playing in the major leagues than that he will follow his father's path.

Henry "Biggie" Abbott has hidden behind his weight for years, and although he is the son and stepson of two of Finch, Minnesota's most famous athletes, he prefers academic success until the girl of his dreams suggests he join the baseball team, and, with his stepbrother's help, he discovers he is a great pitcher.

16-year-old Alex is biracial and an adopted member of a white family. Neither her race nor her adopted status has ever bothered her much. She's always been too focused on excelling at baseball to give herself time to worry about it. But when she meets Reggie, the first black boy to be interested in her, and she discovers letters from her biological father that her adoptive parents have kept hidden, she begins to question who she really is.