Cardboard Gods

Cardboard Godsis the memoir of Josh Wilker, a brilliant writer who has marked the stages ofhis life through the baseball cards he collected as a child. It also capturesthe experience of growing up obsessed with baseball cards and explores what itmeans to be a fan of the game. Along the way, as we get to know Josh, hisfamily, and his friends, we also get Josh's classic observations about thecentral artifacts from his life-the baseball cards themselves.Josh writes about an imagined correspondence with hisfavorite player, Carl Yastrzemski; he uses the magical bubble-blowing powers ofjourneyman Kurt Bevacqua to shed light on the weakening of the powerfulchildhood bond with his older brother; he considers the doomed utopianback-to-the-land dreams of his hippie parents against the backdrop ofinimitable 1970s baseball figures such as pinch runner Herb Washington and Mark"e;The Bird"e; Fidrych. Cardboard Gods ismore than just the story of a man who can't let go of his past, it's proofthat-to paraphrase Jim Bouton-as children we grow up holding baseball cards,but that in the end, we realize it's really the other way around.