Blockade Billy: Contains the chilling bonus story 'Morality'

Blockade Billy is a 2010 novella by Stephen King. It tells the story of William "Blockade Billy" Blakely, a fictional baseball catcher who briefly played for the New Jersey Titans during the 1957 season. The novella took King two weeks to write. He had the following to say about the novella: 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. The book is told through a framing device, where an old man in a retirement home, George "Granny" Grantham, is telling the story to Stephen King. Granny tells of a season in the 1950s when he was the third base coach for the now defunct MLB team, the New Jersey Titans. When the team loses both of their catchers days before the start of the season, they are forced to request a minor league player as a last minute replacement. The replacement turns out to be a young man named William "Billy" Blakely. Although Billy seems to be feeble minded and highly susceptible to suggestion, he turns out to be a phenomenal player. He becomes especially well known for his incredible stopping power at home plate, earning him the nickname "Blockade Billy" amongst fans.