George Bremenhaven, the principal owner of the New York Yankees, is steaming mad. In fact, he's had it up to here (gesture to throat). Why? He's sick and tired of paying his spoiled millionaire ball players to go through the motions of playing the National Pastime only to finish a sorry fourth - or if they try a little, maybe third - year in and year out. Or worse, seeing them go out on strike the one season when it looks as if a pennant, and maybe the Series, might finally be his. Fortunately for George and the fair city of New York, he has a clever - no, diabolically perfect - solution in mind: he'll fire the bums and hire a bunch of replacement players for a fraction of his current $50-million team salary. Through a deal with his cronies in Washington, and with both the connivance of the State Department and the blessing of El Supremo himself, Fidel Castro, Bremenhaven signs up a squad of hard-playing, baseball-loving Cubans - transforming the Bronx Bombers into the New York Yanquis. To handle his new team and hot-tamale situation, George retains one player from the old Yankees, a thirty-eight-year-old relief pitcher, Ryan Shawn, who may be over the hill but has the virtue of speaking Spanish...sort of. George, like most owners, is pigheaded, greedy, and utterly immoral. Ryan, like most vets, has seen enough of baseball to know he wants one more turn in the Big Dance. Thus the devilish pact is signed and sealed. Shawn handpicks the team in Cuba, meets Fidel (learning, among other things, that he uses Old Spice by the gallon), and brings his twenty-four kids back to the Big Apple. Throughout the long season Ryan has to nurse homesick Cubans while he copes with furious fans and ahostile press; coddle George; steer his surprisingly successful Yanquis toward first place; and play cupid for his star hitter. There is also the not-so-trifling matter of Charlene back in Houston, who is not going to wait forever before Ryan-the-Elusive pops the question. Then there's the bombing of the roaches in George's fleabag East Side Hotel, where the Cubans are more or less housed. Not to mention the two-timing feds or the irate players' union, which can't make up its mind who they'd rather see dead, Bremenhaven or Shawn.