Blockade Billy
© 2010 Stephen King
112 pages

Okay, this has nothing to do with Read of England, unless I can claim that it’s a baseball story, and baseball grew from rounders which was invented in England and is slightly older than the United States itself. But I’ve got spring fever, the kind that makes a fella yearn to be sitting in the stands listening to the crack of bats and crowds yelling at the guy stealing second. And this is only a little distraction. Blockade Billy is a baseball novella by Stephen King, an improbable offering from the king of horror. The New Jersey Titans have just lost their pitcher and brought in a new guy, a Billy Blakeley, and he’s a curious kid – -wickedly talented, but has a tendency to talk to himself and he has a strange dispassion about him, lacking the fear all men carry with them when they begin in the major leagues — and, as one of his managers will discover, he has a secret. His story is told from an aging ballplayer talking to Stephen King (who, in real life, is a baseball fan) and regaling him with this sordid story that corporate ball has attempted to blot out. It proved interesting, but it’s unlike any other King work I’ve ever read. I’d say it’s best read by people are itching for a baseball story with a bit of mystery and danger. Troy Soos‘ golden age baseball mysteries are far more developed, though.

Other baseball surprises:
John Grisham’s Calico Joe & Michael Shaara’s For the Love of the Game.

Coming up: Tuck, the finale in Stephen Lawhead’s Robin Hood trilogy, set in Wales in the days of William Rufus, the heir of William the Bastard.