Blockade Billy: An Excellent Short Read from Stephen King

A few weeks ago, I happened upon this book while nosing around in my local library. It took some doing to find it, inasmuch as the book itself is quite small and thin, hidden among the bigger and longer King novels and collections. In fact, Blockade Billy is not a novel at all. It is, at best, a novelette, covering a little over or under 100 pages, depending on what edition you read. That said, it is one of the better stories the author has told in his long and prolific career.

Of course, I will admit to some bias, being a baseball fan and, particularly, a fan of baseball that happened in the long-ago era when I was a boy. This story, set in 1957, takes place in just that time. Still, being about baseball is not going to make it the standout story that it is. It is Stephen King's craft at its best that does that.

Of necessity, the story involves fictional characters, including the narrator and Blockade Billy himself. Added in are a number of actual people who were in the game and who play a considerable part in the book. Among them, we find Ted Kluszewski, Pinky Higgins, the angry, tobacco-dribbling manager of the Red Sox, and Ted Williams or, rather, Teddy F. Ballgame. You know what the F. stands for.

One thing I really liked about the book is that King is in it, as Stephen King. He is not the narrator, even though the story unfolds from a first-person standpoint. Rather, he is an interviewer, getting the story from the narrator, who is a cantankerous ex-ballplayer and coach living out his days in a retirement home. Throughout the story, King has no dialogue, but he is definitely a presence in the room.

The storyteller, named George Grantham ("Granny to you," he tells the title character, early on.), was a coach on the fictitious Newark Titans of the American League. Grantham, as any good Stephen King character should be, is a natural storyteller, who is delighted somebody has bothered to ask his opinion about anything. King has sought him out to find out about the short, mysterious career of William Blakely, otherwise known as Blockade Billy.

The former coach is also quite profane, as you would expect of a guy who used to be a ballplayer and today, hardly gives a damn about anything. That being the case, Blockade Billy is not a story for children; even children who like baseball.

William Blakely, as the story goes, came to the club as an Iowa farmboy with only marginal minor-league experience. He is in the big leagues because he is a catcher, and the Titans have suddenly lost both their catchers in the space of 48 hours. The story of how that came about is, itself, a very absorbing tale within the story. In any case, through a twist of fate, young Blakely got an unexpected shot at the big leagues.

Granny is the first person the new kid sees, when he arrives at the ballpark, having driven all the way from Iowa to get there. So green is this prospect, he asks the coach whether the groundskeepers need him to help out, getting the field ready for opening day, which is when the story begins.

The Newark team's management, from Granny on up, share an initial pessimism that Billy can get the job done, but reluctantly go along with using him, largely because they have no choice. It will take them several days to find and sign a real big-league catcher.

As it turns out, Billy is more than up to the challenge, particularly in the area of keeping enemy players from scoring on close plays at the plate. That is where the name "Blockade Billy" comes from. Ah, but remember, this is a Stephen King story. Something horrible has to happen. No, it is not alien monsters from outer space, but it is horrible enough, given the circumstances.

The story is so ghastly that all Billy's records and the records of the Newark Titans are stricken from the books. Now, here is where baseball fans (me among them) might have a major beef: Once a game is played and entered into the books, it does not get stricken, no matter what. Nor do the players' records vanish. Even the Chicago Black Sox, who threw the 1919 World Series, though they were banned for life and barred from the Hall of Fame (As Bonds, Conseco, Clemens and their ilk all deserve to be), their individual statistics remain part of the game's history. So, yes, you will have to willfully suspend this portion of your disbelief, but, if you can manage it, you are in for as fine a baseball tale as you will ever see.

Sources

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/20/AR2010042004357.html

Wikipedia

Blockade Billy, Stephen King, Cemetery Dance, pub.