Interviewed by the author, retired baseball coach George “Granny” Grantham wearily discusses a crazy season some 50-plus years ago. Beset by injuries, his team turns to unknown and unheralded William “Blockade Billy” Blakely. Blakely’s unexpected success turns the team around, but the seemingly simple-minded catcher’s checkered past threatens to get the entire season erased from the record books.
That Stephen King wrote a baseball novella shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Baseball figured heavily in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and he previously co-authored a nonfiction book on the 2004 Red Sox World Series run. What is surprising is how ordinary this treatment is. Even when King steers clear of the supernatural and extradimensional, he has a tendency to ratchet up the stakes so that everything is a matter of life and death, good and evil, hope and despair. Not so with Blockade Billy. While not void of greater thematical significance (this manages to hit some dark and desperate notes, after all), this is a baseball story first, pure and simple. King’s approach to the subject matter is nostalgic to the point of corny, but the author’s legitimate passion is admirably and convincingly conveyed.
Like much of King’s work, Blockade Billy is a page-turner. The storytelling is engrossing, the plot advances quickly, and there’s a legitimately unforeseen (perhaps too unforeseen) twist toward the end. And while this makes for quality entertainment, it doesn’t nearly mask the book’s technical deficiencies. Aside from Granny and Billy, most of the characters are either overly familiar or paper-thin. The team’s ace pitcher, for instance, is a hard-drinking womanizer right out of central casting. The writing is also less than stellar, as much a product of King’s laziness as it is of Granny’s hokey narration.
Blockade Billy is a quick, fun read that will please baseball fans and intrigue King fans, but like a late-innings error in an early-season game, it doesn’t make much of an impact in the grand scheme of things.
7.25/10
No comments:
Post a Comment