Blockade Billy
2010 • 112 pages
Ratings22
Average rating3.4
15
Ratings22
Average rating3.4
"Even the most die-hard baseball fans don't know the true story of William "Blockade Billy" Blakely. He may have been the greatest player the game has ever seen, but today no one remembers his name. He was the first--and only--player to have his existence completely removed from the record books. Even his team is long forgotten, barely a footnote in the game's history. Every effort was made to erase any evidence that William Blakely played professional baseball, and with good reason. Blockade Billy had a secret darker than any pill or injection that might cause a scandal in sports today. His secret was much, much worse."--p. 2 of cover.
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I think I'm in the minority among King's readers: I think that some of his most powerful writing comes when he avoids using supernatural elements in his stories, and that his short work is much better than the longer stuff he's better known for. The modern publishing industry hasn't been knd to the novella, but King is an absolute master of the form.
As a result, I was pretty excited for Blockade Billy, which for the most part is a classical Americana story – two old men sittinig down to talk about baseball. Then, near the end, the story twists, adding a horrific element to it. It was a pretty good story, familiar but not predictable: my only quibble was that I didn't see how the consequences of the story's climax necessarily followed from the climax itself.
Even creepier was the ‘b-side' story, Morality, a story about what people will do for money and how difficult it can be to escape those decisions.
Stephen King is a master storyteller. Loved the story of Blockade Billy. It had me hooked from start to finish. The bonus story “Morality” was also enjoyable but I didn't find it as good as Blockade Billy.
Pedestrian stories saved only by King's wonderful narrative style. It feels like he couldn't be bothered anymore. Blockade Billy isn't bad actually (again, mainly because of King's knack for writing well rounded characters) but the so called dark secret isn't very dark. Sure it was horrible but would it make the league force the team to erase all traces of Billy from the records? Really?
The bonus story, ‘Morality', didn't do anything for me either. A woman is offered two hundred grand if she agrees to punch a kid in the face.
I'm not really a baseball fan. Okay, let's be honest, I don't really know anything about baseball. So, it was really difficult to get into this and some of the baseball lingoes went over my head. I think if I knew more about baseball, I would've been able to get more into the story.
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