I like baseball so this might be a bit biased.

I do NOT like baseball so much that I thought King’s “Faithful” was an exciting read, but I do like baseball and a common critique I hear about this story is that it’s boring because it focuses on, well, baseball.

But I love it. This is a novella written as an interview transcript. The interviewee, a character talking to King himself, is giving his memories on a player called Blockade Billy. It documents their season and ends about how you would expect a Stephen King story to end.

This isn’t the first time King has done stories written as transcripts (Dolores Claiborne was a whole NOVEL written as one) but I could see how it would throw some people off.

Look: I get why people might not like this story.

It’s short, it’s not horror in King’s traditional sense, it’s a transcript, and it’s about baseball.

But I think it’s great. It reminded me of those 1990s Disney sports movies, documenting the dramatic rise of the underdog to a big ending (though the endings are quite different) and I thought it was very exciting. It felt weird to get this nostalgic hit for DISNEY movies while reading KING but it happened.

Also, if you’re struggling with the transcript angle of the story (same for Dolores), I recommend checking your favorite audiobook sources for it because the narrator is very good and gives the transcript a lot of life and drama.

I think this is easily one of King’s hidden gems. People see the cover, shudder because they don’t like baseball, and dismiss it. But they shouldn’t be so fast because there’s a lot to love in this little novella.

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