Blockade Billy

Stephen King

Apr 2010 · Storyville

About this ebook

"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." - Stephen King

Even the most diehard 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...and only Stephen King, the most gifted storyteller of our age, can reveal the truth to the world once and for all.

This eBook edition features both the cover illustration by Glen Orbik and the interior artwork of Alex McVey from the limited hardcover edition published by Cemetery Dance Publications.

From Publishers Weekly (boxed review):
A quirky baseball player with a past shrouded in secrecy is the tragic hero of this macabre tale from the dark side of the all-American sport...a narrative steeped so perfectly in the argot of the game and the behavior of its players and fans that readers will willingly suspend their disbelief. As King's fiction goes...a deftly executed suicide squeeze, with sharp spikes hoisted high and aimed at the jugular on the slide home.

Ratings and reviews

This book was actually pretty good, but I'm not very familiar with baseball and its rules, so I felt like I did not enjoy the book as much as I could have. Not only that, the story, as many of King's short stories, had the potential to be something much bigger, more or less in the Firestarter style. Billy was such a cool and deep character, I think he deserved a story better than just a coach's flashback. As for the extra story, I found it of the right size. It was a good one, but definitely not as captivating as the main one.

Written so well that I had to check to make sure it wasn't a true story. Would make a great movie, one day.

I am a baseball fanatic. The story was short and very interesting. For people that love baseball and Steven King, it's a must read.

About the author

Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine, on September 21, 1947. After graduating with a Bachelor's degree in English from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970, he became a teacher. His spare time was spent writing short stories and novels. King's first novel would never have been published if not for his wife. She removed the first few chapters from the garbage after King had thrown them away in frustration. Three months later, he received a $2,500 advance from Doubleday Publishing for the book that went on to sell a modest 13,000 hardcover copies. That book, Carrie, was about a girl with telekinetic powers who is tormented by bullies at school. She uses her power, in turn, to torment and eventually destroy her mean-spirited classmates. When United Artists released the film version in 1976, it was a critical and commercial success. The paperback version of the book, released after the movie, went on to sell more than two-and-a-half million copies. Many of King's other horror novels have been adapted into movies, including The Shining, Firestarter, Pet Semetary, Cujo, Misery, The Stand, and The Tommyknockers. Under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, King has written the books The Running Man, The Regulators, Thinner, The Long Walk, Roadwork, Rage, and It. He is number 2 on the Hollywood Reporter's '25 Most Powerful Authors' 2016 list. King is one of the world's most successful writers, with more than 100 million copies of his works in print. Many of his books have been translated into foreign languages, and he writes new books at a rate of about one per year. In 2003, he received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In 2012 his title, The Wind Through the Keyhole made The New York Times Best Seller List. King's title's Mr. Mercedes and Revival made The New York Times Best Seller List in 2014. He won the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 2015 for Best Novel with Mr. Mercedes. King's title Finders Keepers made the New York Times bestseller list in 2015. Sleeping Beauties is his latest 2017 New York Times bestseller.