When the playboy quarterback of the hapless New York Templars is injured in a freak sexcapade, backup QB Quinn Novak picks up the ball and takes the team to the playoffs. There he attracts the attention of two other quarterbacks who’ve been rivals since high school, Mal Ryan of the Philadelphia Quakers and Tam Tarquin of the San Francisco Miners.<br><br>Quinn begins a volatile relationship with the narcissistic Mal and a loving one with the open-hearted Tam, keeping each secret from the other. What he doesn’t know is that the two have a complex sexual history of their own.

The Penalty for Holding

This is what I long for, he thought. This is what I belong to.


He reared back. The hitter never saw it.


It was the same with the next batter and the next. Nine pitches, nine strikes. Three men up and three men down.


“From now on you play for us,” the pitcher said.


Quinnie was at once elated and deflated.


“But I have school,” he said. “I go to one of the schools President Barack Obama attended.”


“Ah,” the first baseman said. “Oh bah mah.”


He pronounced the name with equal emphasis on all the syllables, reflecting the uninflected aspect of the Bahasa language and the awe in which the Indonesian people held Barack Obama—a man they saw as a native son, one of their own who made good on the stage of the far, wide world. To invoke his name was to utter a password that provided entry to a magical kingdom.


Chapter 4