Cardboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards - Hardcover

"Josh Wilker's "Cardboard Gods" is a poignant and vivid account of how and why he accessed baseball cards as a survival tool while negotiating a 1970s childhood marked by changing mores and confusing mixed messages. This is a story of brotherly love, survival of the also-ran, and the hope that quickens a kid's heartbeat each time he rips open a fresh pack of baseball cards, gets a whiff of bubble gum, and, holding his breath, sees who he's got as opposed to who and what he needs. If you love the writing of Dave Eggers or Augusten Burroughs, you just may love Josh Wilker's "Cardboard Gods," too. I did." --Wally Lamb, "New York Times" bestselling author of "She's Come Undone" and "The Hour I First Believed" "Josh Wilker writes as beautifully about baseball and life as anyone ever has." --Rob Neyer, ESPN "This is a story, at its heart, about growing up in America. More specifically it's about growing up at a time when country, author, and the great American game of baseball were simultaneously in a state of flux. Hippies, post-Watergate Nixonites, parents, kids, teens, and even baseball, forever altered with the introduction of free agency, all grasping at a murky, anxious future. Josh Wilker, using seemingly random baseball cards pulled from his childhood, and the memories and metaphors they invoke, guides us through the restless and awkward story of his life (so far) with grace, pain, and ultimately vindication. In short, it's a story about baseball and America and his (our) generation." --David Cross, actor, comedian, and author of "I Drink for a Reason" " "Cardboard Gods" is more than just a book. It is something that I lived and live still. I was the older brother. I live on Route 14 like Josh once did. My two sons were those boys in the picture, VW bus and all. "Cardboard Gods" awakened feelings in me that I have long suppressed. It is a growth book, like "Catcher in the Rye" . People, especially people who love baseball, will carryd

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.