Blockade Billy
First edition cover
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| Author | Stephen King |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Suspense fiction |
| Publisher | Cemetery Dance |
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Publication date
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April 20, 2010 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 112 |
| ISBN | |
Blockade Billy is a 2010 novella by Stephen King. It tells the story of William "Blockade Billy" Blakely, a fictional baseball catcher who briefly played for the New Jersey Titans during the 1957 season. The novella took King two weeks to write. He had the following to say about the novella:
I love old-school baseball, and I also love the way people who've spent a lifetime in the game talk about the game. I tried to combine those things in a story of suspense. People have asked me for years when I was going to write a baseball story. Ask no more; this is it.
The book is told through a framing device, where an old man in a retirement home, George "Granny" Grantham, is telling the story to Stephen King. Granny tells of a season in the 1950s when he was the third base coach for the now defunct MLB team, the New Jersey Titans. When the team loses both of their catchers days before the start of the season, they are forced to request a minor league player as a last minute replacement. The replacement turns out to be a young man named William "Billy" Blakely. Although Billy seems to be feeble minded and highly susceptible to suggestion, he turns out to be a phenomenal player. He becomes especially well known for his incredible stopping power at home plate, earning him the nickname "Blockade Billy" amongst fans. He quickly becomes endeared to the team, especially to star pitcher Danny Dusen, a usually arrogant, self-centered man who adopts Billy as his good luck charm. Granny, however, becomes suspicious of Billy when a player who was badly injured during a tag out accuses him of intentionally slicing his ankle. Although Billy claims innocence, and there is no evidence to support the accusation, Granny is convinced that Billy is lying.
As the season goes on, Billy's popularity continues to grow. One day, however, Granny arrives before a game to find the team's manager in a state of panic. Refusing to divulge what is wrong, he asks Granny to cover him as manager, only stating that the team deserves one last game together. During the following game, Hi Wenders, an umpire with an antagonistic relationship to the team, makes a bad call, resulting in Granny being thrown out of the game when he argues against it, and for cries to "Kill the ump!" to come from the crowd. Granny returns to the locker room to find the team manager with two police officers and a police detective. They explain that Billy is an imposter; his real name is Eugene Katsanis, an orphan that worked on the Blakely farm. The real William Blakely had seemingly been murdered by Eugene alongside his parents a month ago. Granny reflects on his own speculations of the situation, guessing that Eugene had been abused by the Blakelys, and that the abuse grew worse as the real William, a failing minor league player, became consumed by jealousy over Eugene's superior skill. Eventually the abuse became too much, causing Eugene to murder the family. When the call came in requesting Billy as an emergency replacement for the Titans, Eugene decided to take Billy's identity and report to the team in his place.
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