The town of Pleasant Hill had never seen one of its ball players get an offer to play for a Major League team's farm-club when Joe Harmer's dreams to make it in the big league looked most promising. But his brother's sudden death in the fields of Vietnam make him question his own future and explore the idea of enlisting in the USMC. With college acceptances arriving in the mail and competing personal and family interests pulling him away from professional baseball, his brother's death sends this honor student and gifted athlete to the protest barricades where he burns his draft card, gets arrested and finds himself homeless in Philadelphia. There he takes up with a dangerous biker named Shade and learns how to fight the war at home amid the drugs and the rock'n'roll groove of the '60s underworld.