Cardboard Gods
An All-American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards
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4.1 • 23 Ratings
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- $23.99
Publisher Description
Cardboard Gods is the memoir of Josh Wilker, a brilliant writer who has marked the stages of his life through the baseball cards he collected as a child. It also captures the experience of growing up obsessed with baseball cards and explores what it means to be a fan of the game. Along the way, as we get to know Josh, his family, and his friends, we also get Josh’s classic observations about the central artifacts from his life: the baseball cards themselves. Josh writes about an imagined correspondence with his favorite player, Carl Yastrzemski; he uses the magical bubble-blowing powers of journeyman Kurt Bevacqua to shed light on the weakening of the powerful childhood bond with his older brother; he considers the doomed utopian back-to-the-land dreams of his hippie parents against the backdrop of inimitable 1970s baseball figures such as “Designated Pinch Runner” Herb Washington and Mark “The Bird” Fidrych. Cardboard Gods is more than just the story of a man who can’t let go of his past, it’s proof that — to paraphrase Jim Bouton — as children we grow up holding baseball cards but in the end we realize that it’s really the other way around.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Before sports memorabilia became a lucrative industry, collecting baseball cards was just a youthful source of summertime fun, alongside ice cream and swimming. But for Josh Wilker, they were more than a pastime—they were a lifeline. As he describes in this affectionate memoir, baseball cards carried him through childhood and a decent chunk of adulthood, too—providing him with a way to connect with his peers and his big brother, despite his nontraditional and sometimes unstable family. We were bewitched by the way he describes the memories he ties to specific cards, especially those of lesser-known major leaguers who spent most of their time on the bench. Everything about Wilker’s story hit us right in the feels, from his own frayed family connections to the truly awesome mustaches that made late-’70s baseball players so wildly iconic. Whether or not you’re a baseball lover too, this intimate tale hits it out of the park.
Customer Reviews
From blog to book
Brilliant writing. I first started reading these stories from the blog, and then got the book. It is by turns hillarious and serious, describing the writer's life growing up, as reflected in the unusual baseball cards he collected. It reminded me of Primo Levi's Periodic Table. An excellent book.
Insightful
If you ever collected cards, or had offspring that collected, do not pass on this book. Insights on what cards meant to the pathological truth-telling author as his life went thru many fits and starts, was heart scratching, captivating, and endearing. I'm thankful Cardboard Gods was written.