Cardboard Gods
An AllAmerican Tale Told through Baseball Cards

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 Joshs classic observations about the central artifacts from his lifethe baseball cards themselves. Josh writes about an imagined correspondence with his favorite player, Carl Yastrzemski; he uses the magical bubbleblowing 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 backtotheland 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 cant let go of his past, its proof thatto paraphrase Jim Boutonas children we grow up holding baseball cards but in the end we realize that its really the other way around.