Blockade Billy (edition 2010)

It’s a really great book with, that won’t take much time to read. I read this book because my dad’s interest in Stephen King.

Minor league King. ( )

Good, if somewhat plodding story. ( )

Good, if somewhat plodding story. ( )

I like baseball. Watching it. I don't follow or understand stats or anything, and I'm not "down with the lingo". I understand the basic concept of the game and am pretty good with the rules, but that's about the extent of it: I enjoy watching baseball games.

I know now that I do not like reading about baseball. I am familiar with the game, but even I had a hard time following all of the lingo and action. To Stephen King's credit, the parts I did understand were vivid and easy to see, as usual, but it's one thing to see something described, and another to listen to someone describe something in terms you're unfamiliar with. And there are a lot of terms that I think would be unfamiliar to people who are not baseball fans. Some that I only guessed at figuring out by context, like "We won the next game, lost a squeaker on getaway day". Umm... OK. I'll take your word for it.

This book reads like exactly what it is supposed to read like: An old baseball man talking to a real baseball fan about a crazy season back in the day. Which is fine, but it'll work best for real baseball fans who know what RBIs are and what a good batting average is and where the foul line is, and how many balls to a walk, etc.

The baseball stuff was OK for me and that's a big, big part of the book. It's almost a character itself. The other characters were OK as well, none as fleshed out as I'd like, but none really cardboard cutouts either. I just wanted a bit more. ( )