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 we get Josh's classic observations about the baseball cards themselves. He writes about an imagined correspondence with his favorite player, uses the magical bubble-blowing powers of Kurt Bevacqua to shed light on the weakening bond with his brother, and considers the doomed utopian dreams of his hippie parents against the backdrop of various baseball figures. This is more than just the story of a man who can't let go of his past; it's proof that as children we grow up holding baseball cards, but in the end we realize that it's really the other way around.
