Billy Crawford’s Double Play by Brad Smith
This clever, funny novel hits a homer
Think Robert Redford in The Natural. As Roy Hobbs, Redford is older than the other players on his baseball team but, of course, heart-meltingly the handsomest. And, with a spiritual element going for him, also the best hitter. Roy just has to swat the ball and off it soars, over the field and stands to smash the lights of the Wrigley Field scoreboard. Glorious.
Now, keep the chick-magnet appeal—but subtract the ace hitting, the spiritual element. Well, the spiritual element for now. Meet middle-aged, has-been baseball player Billy Crawford, protagonist of Brad Smith’s clever, funny Billy Crawford’s Double Play.
Crawford, on the team of the fictional Southern Ontario Rose City, can’t admit his game is fading. When a sports reporter, Scoop (of course he’s named Scoop) Sutherland, unkindly alludes to this, here’s Crawford’s reaction:
“He leads the writer into the showers and turns on the cold water, holding him under the nozzle for a full minute. The man’s protests are louder than his suit.
“‘Never tell a man who’s four for his last forty-three that he’s over the hill, Scoop,’ [Crawford] says. ‘Gee, I hope those colours don’t run.’”
For those of us too inhibited to punish bullies via Crawford’s version of waterboarding, or any other means, this LOL scene is vicariously satisfying. And we can’t help smiling along with our dimple-flashing hero when a cop accosts him about having driven, obviously drunk, into a ditch: “I wouldn’t bother you guys about something this minor,” Crawford cheerily ripostes, while in his mind insulting the cop as a “square jaw.”
Savvy storyteller, Miller infuses Crawford’s adventures with yet another emotion: poignancy. When the Riders’ general manager, Tom Plunkett, informs Crawford he’s off the team, our hero as uszh can’t concede that his batter-up! skills have ebbed:
“‘What did you think?’ Plunkett asks then. ‘That you’d play forever?’
“Billy looks back. ‘Yeah, I did.’”
The dialogue is both simple and searing. Who among us has been unable at some point, at some age, to admit we’re not equal to a job/hobby/interest we’re passionate about?
Here’s where the concept of double play comes in. For the uninitiated, a baseball double play occurs when two players, generally the batter and a runner, are called out. But in this story, double play has a double meaning.
It’s election season in Rose City. In the running for mayor: nice, elderly Joe Simmons, who wants to protect Rose City’s green spaces; and calculating developer Carroll Miller, intent on paving over paradise to build, build, build.
Problem. Joe Simmons is like Joe Biden in 2024: weak and doddering. Reluctantly Simmons steps aside to let his daughter Kate run instead. Fed up with a philandering husband, she’s recently quit her job at a Toronto law firm and moved back to Rose City.
Miller, who owns the Riders, soon realizes that his new opponent, smart, personable and funny, has the rosier election prospects. Aware of Crawford’s continuing popularity among Riders fans, Machiavellian Miller convinces him to enter the race as a spoiler third candidate. Crawford’s a cinch to draw votes from Kate, and Miller will win. The deal: Crawford will be reinstated on the team.
Crawford accepts. Of course he does. Baseball is his be-all and end-all. Or is it? Earlier, I hinted that our hero might not be immune from a Roy Hobbs-like spiritual element.
Our hero may just make his own, election-version double play. Trust me: like the crowd at any good game, you as a reader will be riveted.
About the Author
Among other honours, Southern Ontario novelist and screenwriter Brad Smith has won the Spur Award, Best Western Traditional Novel, from the Western Writers of America for The Return of Kid Cooper. His novels One-Eyed Jacks and Copperhead Road were shortlisted for the Dashiell Hammett Prize. Billy Crawford’s Double Play is his 15th novel. Smith lives in a 90-year-old farmhouse near the north shore of Lake Erie, where he tinkers, respectively, on his vintage cars and his golf swing.
About the Reviewer
Melanie Jackson is a freelance Vancouver writer/editor. She’s also the award-winning author of middle-grade/YA suspensers, including Orca Books’ Dinah Galloway Mystery Series, and several chillers set in amusement parks. Visit Melanie’s page at The Writers’ Union of Canada.
Book Details
Publisher: Wolsack and Wynn, October 14, 2025
Language: English
Softcover: 248 pages
ISBN 978-1-998408-30-6