What is "brushback"

n. (context baseball English) A brushback pitch; a pitch that comes very close to the batter, forcing the batter to move back from the plate

Brushback may refer to:

• Brushback pitch, a baseball pitch thrown high and inside, to force the batter away from the plate
• Brushback (novel), a 1998 crime novel by the American writer K.C. Constantine

Brushback is a crime novel by the American writer K.C. Constantine set in 1990s Rocksburg, a fictional, blue-collar, Rustbelt town in Western Pennsylvania (modeled on the author's hometown of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, adjacent to Pittsburgh).

Detective Sergeant Ruggiero "Rugs" Carlucci, the self-deprecating protégé of recently retired Mario Balzic, is the protagonist.

It tells the story of Carlucci, now acting chief of the Rocksburg, Police Department. When a former professional baseball player is beaten to death, Carlucci delves into the past of the athlete and finds that the bases are loaded with suspects.

It is the fourteenth book in the 17-volume Rocksburg series.

"Ruggiero "Rugs" Carlucci is investigating the brutal murder of Brushback Bobby Blasco, a local hero who once beaned the immortal Ted Williams, even though Williams was his Red Sox teammate. Blasco, who has a history of beating wives and girlfriends, has been bludgeoned to death with a Louisville Slugger autographed by the Splendid Splinter. But Rugs has many competing concerns: his mother's nightly anxiety attacks; his duties as acting police chief; byzantine city politics; undertrained, overworked cops; and summoning the courage to ask a beautiful woman for a date. The denouement scarcely resolves all his worries, but readers will feel a kind of affirmation from knowing that Rugs and Rocksburg will soldier on. K. C. Constantine is our truest detective of the heart".

Thomas Gaughan {{cite journal