The New Paltz Outlaws

Book excerpt: Lance Bangor, an incredibly talented but troubled pitcher, catches the eye of the New York Yankees and is sent to play for the most notorious minor league team in baseball, The New Paltz Outlaws. The Outlaws are a team full of talented but disturbed baseball players, from the first baseman with split personalities (one plays for the Negro Leagues, the other is an aspiring musician), a trio of Canadian criminals under town arrest, a barefooted outfielder that lives amongst animals in the forest, etc. When the present leader is taken off to jail, Lance becomes the new leader of the Outlaws and takes them to new heights of popularity and debauchery. Eventually becoming too big for the small town, Lance joins the New York Yankees but folds under big league pressure and finds himself banned from the game for life. Too embarrassed to return to New Paltz, Lance travels from the Caribbean to Hollywood and goes through a variety of professions from being a stuntman for an egotistical soap opera star to hitting rock bottom and becoming an exotic dancer and actor in amateur adult films. It's a story of one man who had to lose everything he ever wanted to get everything he ever needed.