It's the start of the minor league baseball season, and Annie Savoy, for who baseball is *the* religion, is going through the annual process of choosing the one player on her home team of the Durham Bulls of the Carolina League, he who she will take under her wings, sexual and otherwise, solely for the season, and who has always gone on to have his best year as a player. She has narrowed her choice to two recent acquires: Ebby Calvin LaLoosh, the wild neophyte pitcher with a wicked fastball - the pitch on which he solely relies - but can't aim, the more he thinks about it, the more erratic the pitch gets, while he doesn't appreciate anyone criticizing him or it in believing he knows best in his lack of self-awareness; and catcher Crash Davis, the veteran who has been around the minor leagues for twelve years and who was brought in solely to harness and reign in Ebby's power. While Ebby would gladly accept Annie's offer in seeing sex as an inherent part of his being, Crash, who is as philosophical in being a thinker as he is athletic, takes himself out of the running - the first player ever to do so - as, although attracted to her, does not see sex as the "game" she seems to treat it, especially as he knows he is nearing the end of his baseball playing career. Part of Annie's initial transformation of Ebby is to give him that nickname he sorely wants - Nuke - to match his pitches. Thus begins Annie, Crash and Nuke's three-way season-long relationship as they evolve because of it as baseball, sexual and human beings.—Huggo