A Face in the Crowd is a novella by Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan, originally published as an e-book on August 21, 2012, as well as an audiobook, read by Craig Wasson.

[2] Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan had previously collaborated in 2004 on a non-fiction book Faithful, chronicling the 2004 Boston Red Sox season.

I play this by keeping an eye on the faces of spectators behind home plate.

What if a guy watches a lot of baseball games on TV, maybe because he's a shut-in or an invalid (or maybe because he's doing a book on the subject, poor schmuck), and one night he sees his best friend from childhood, who was killed in a car crash, sitting in one of the seats behind the backstop?

After that the protagonist sees him every night at every game, sometimes at Fenway, sometimes at Camden Yards, sometimes at the CreepyDome up in Toronto, but every time there are more people the poor freaked-out guy knew, sitting all around him: this guy's dead friends and relatives, all sitting in the background at the ballpark.