The Team by David M. Salkin

This book, although a work of fiction, is based on a real military operation that was run in the late 1960’s in Southeast Asia. I would like to thank Al (whose last name I will not reveal) for the information he shared with me as a Navy Frogman fighting in Vietnam. Al was a “UDT”, Underwater Demolition Team “frogman”. This group of specialized operators would later evolve into what we now know as Navy SEALs.

Al and his team were mostly Warrant Officers, and put together on a fictitious Navy All-Star Baseball team. It was their job to show baseball to the people of Southeast Asia as an exhibition team. The fifteen of them toured South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos playing baseball. There were fifteen men on their roster. There were never more than eleven in the dugout. Where were the other four? They were out “working”—and it wasn’t playing baseball.

When this idea was first showed to a publisher, they said it was a cool story, but it wasn’t believable. Al laughed when I told him that. He was happy in a way, and said, “It was a good cover story after all, wasn’t it?” Yes it was, Al. Good enough that it deserves to be told…

In this modern version of the story, The Team travels from their first mission in Saudi Arabia to the rain forest of the Tri-Border Region of South America—a haven for international drug smugglers, narco-terrorists, weapons and drug smugglers, and dangerous thugs from all over the world. Whether posing as the Navy All-Star Exhibition Baseball Team, or a group of Christian Missionaries, this group represents the finest warriors of the US arsenal.

When the job is dangerous and can’t be done by conventional forces, there’s one team on the President’s speed dial…

THE TEAM is available from Amazon.

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David M. Salkin is the author of:
Crescent Fire
Necessary Extremes
The MOP
Forever Hunger
and his latest release, The Team.

These are available as audible books as well. (The Team is not yet available as audio or paperback…in production.)