It tells the story of William "Blockade Billy" Blakely, a fictional baseball catcher who briefly played for the New Jersey Titans[1] during the 1957 season.

[4][5]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.

When the call came in requesting Billy as an emergency replacement for the Titans, Eugene assumed William's identity and reported to the team in his place.

Despite Granny's attempt to create a convincing pretense for sending him to the locker room, Eugene senses that something is wrong and, rather than going straight there, tracks down Wenders.

Following the crowd's demands to kill the umpire, he slashes Wenders' throat before being taken into police custody, and then committing suicide by choking on a bar of soap.

[8] On May 25, 2010, Simon & Schuster released the novella as an audiobook, as well as a trade edition hardcover, featuring a bonus short story, "Morality" (originally published in the July 2009 issue of Esquire).

The Washington Post praised the novella, calling it "swift" and "colorful", saying that it works well because of the voice that King gives to the narrator, Granny Grantham, and "the lovingly detailed evocation of the game [baseball] as it was played in 1957".