The Team

By: David Salkin

Narrated by: Scott Pollak

Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

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…

©2012 David M. Salkin (P)2012 David M. Salkin

Good enough story. chapter music really bad.

The story was good a narrations very good. However there is music at beginnings and ends of chapters thay is unnecessary, too loud and distracts reader from story
Ill try another of his books and if same issue with music stop buying them.

Great thriller

Great story, great fun to hear as the narrator does a great job. Very realistic, having been in the triple frontier in South America, the description in the book is exact.

Good listen

The Team brings an interesting, and amazingly true, concept to the war on terror. A "baseball team" used as a front. Though this is the premise, the actual mission they are sent on does not have anything to do with the team going somewhere to play, it is just what brings them together. It's a good story, not as detailed as some, though the "details" of what the jungle people did is described rather gruesomely. Other than that it was a "light read".
My only real issue was the sound and music used in between the chapters. It was louder than the normal sound level thus irritating when it arrived. I am truly not fond of music and sounds being used in this manner, so keep that in mind if you feel the same way.
The narrator did a good job, it was good to have "real" female voices at times as well. Though it was odd that only one of the 2 main female characters had the female voice. The male narrator was used for the other.