Whilst being quite enjoyable to read, the main problem with Blockade Billy is that it’s ultimately a pointless endeavour. At only eighty pages long, it begs the question as to why this was released as a separate publication when there have certainly been longer works in King’s back catalogue that were part of his ever growing collections of short stories (e.g.: The Mist in Skeleton Crew and The Little Sister of Eluria in Everything’s Eventual).
It’s still pretty good though. Not a masterpiece but certainly no failure. In typical King fashion the story centres around a baseball player by the name of William “Blockade Billy” Blakely who, whilst being very popular, harbours a dark secret. As it turns out, said secret isn’t anything we haven’t read about before in King’s work and as it turns out, the majority of the time is spent setting up how great the man is at baseball. King is obviously an avid fan of the sport but after the first game, it gets a little tiring, even at such a short page count.
It’s entertaining enough. I would consider it a middling story if it were included in a collection.
It also comes with a “Bonus Story” called Morality, which is almost the same length. I haven’t read it yet.
3/5
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