Timmy Burke is growing up in Boston in the last year of Nixon's reign. The neighborhood bully is giving him the eye , he's going through puberty , and his Dad can't stop drinking. A good deed gets him access to the Red Sox dugout where he befriends a Cuban slugger who has a supernatural aura. A mobster's son sees the baseball player , Manuelito Santos , as a way out of his gambling debts. The parish priest who dated Timmy's Mom in high school debates God's logic and mercy over Bushmill's and Budweiser with the Jewish baseball scout who discovered Santos.