Cardboard Godsis the memoir of Josh Wilker, an excellent writer who has marked the levels ofhis existence through the baseball cards he collected as a child. In addition, it capturesthe experience of growing up enthusiastic about baseball credit cards and explores what itmeans to be always a fan of the game. On the way, as we get to know Josh, hisfamily, and his friends, we also obtain Josh’s traditional observations about thecentral artifacts from his life-the baseball cards themselves.

Josh writes about an imagined correspondence with hisfavorite participant, Carl Yastrzemski; he uses the marvelous bubble-blowing powers ofjourneyman Kurt Bevacqua to reveal the weakening from 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 for example pinch runner Natural herb Washington and Tag”The Parrot” Fidrych. Cardboard Gods ismore than just the story of a man who can’t let go of his previous, it’s proofthat-to paraphrase Jim Bouton-as children we grow up holding baseball credit cards,but that in the end, we understand it’s really the other way around.