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 the
1957 Major League Baseball season, when he was the
third base coach for a now-defunct team, the
New Jersey Titans. When the team loses both of their
catchers days before the start of the season, they are forced to seek a
minor league player as a last-minute replacement. The replacement turns out to be a young man named William "Billy" Blakely. Although he seems to be feeble-minded and highly susceptible to suggestion, Billy 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. Billy quickly becomes endeared to the team, especially to the usually self-centered star
pitcher Danny Dusen, who adopts Billy as his good luck charm. Granny, however, becomes suspicious when an opposing player, who was badly injured during a tag out, accuses Billy of intentionally slicing his ankle. Although Billy claims innocence, and there is no evidence to support the accusation, Granny is convinced that he is lying. As the season goes on, Billy's popularity continues to grow. One day, Granny finds the team's manager in a state of panic. Refusing to divulge what's wrong, he asks Granny to cover him as manager, only stating that the team deserves one last game together. During the following game, Hi Wenders, an
umpire with an antagonistic relationship to the team, makes a bad call, resulting in Granny being thrown out of the game when he argues against it, leading to chants of "kill the ump" to come from the crowd. He returns to the locker room to find the manager with two police officers and a detective. They explain that Billy is an imposter; his real name is Eugene Katsanis, an orphan who worked on the Blakely farm in
Iowa. The real "William Blakely" had seemingly been murdered by Eugene alongside his parents a month previously. Granny reflects on his own speculations of the situation, guessing that Eugene had been abused by the Blakelys and that the abuse grew worse as the real William, a failing minor league player, became consumed by jealousy over Eugene's superior skill. Eventually, Eugene was provoked into murdering the family. 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. Granny is asked to send Eugene to the police alone to be arrested. 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, where he dies by suicide, choking on a bar of soap. Granny goes on to describe the misfortunes the team suffered afterwards and reflects that despite their adoption of Billy as a good luck charm, he instead served as a black hole of luck, sucking it away from the rest of the team. ==Release==