Cardboard Gods -Josh Wilker-
Words really cannot describe how good this book is? I am 55 pages in and already it blows EVERY baseball book (and 90% of books in general) I’ve ever read, out of the water…. And not just a by a little, but by a mile.
Wilker breaks the book up into small chapters that talk specifically about a certain baseball card from his youth and about his semi-normal life from childhood to adulthood. The chapters are easy and quick to read, and it is hard to put down. I feel like even if you are familiar with his blog “Cardboard Gods” you will be missing loads if you do not read the book. So I thought I would copy out one of my favorite paragraphs so far.
In this selection Wilker pontificates on a Rudy Meoli Topps card from 1975 while talking about his childhood. Also In order to get what he is talking about I have to show you his scan of the baseball card where Meoli is foul-popping out dramatically. So here it is.
“…..Behold this card. Behold this world of drama and wonder. Behold the uniformed maestro at the center of everything, his head thrown back in awe, his arms outspread as if to proclaim: Behold. Behold this maestro’s singular mellifluous name, Rudy Meoli, doubled within and without the borders of the moment in flamboyant cursive and sturdy black block. Behold the similar doubling of the timid lowercase word on the maestro’s chest by a thunderous uppercase echo from above —ANGELS—as if somewhere just beyond the fringes of this world exists an invincible solidity, the answer to the question in our hearts. Behold this angel.
For a long time, I lived in an angelic state of stupidity and grace. I knew how to find happiness. I thought that something magnificent could occur anywhere. For a long time, years, I didn’t understand that I wasn’t witnessing the occurrence of something magnificent in Rudy Meoli’s card from 1975, my first year of collecting. I didn’t understand that all I was looking at was some little-known marginal who’d just squandered one of his rare chances to reveal any previously undiscovered magnificence by hitting a weak foul pop-up, the easiest of outs. Even to this day there’s a faint residue of my inability to interpret the blatantly obvious in this picture. On some level, perhaps the only level of any importance in this life, I still think Rudolph Bartholomew Meoli, a backup infielder with a .212 lifetime average and more career errors than extra-base hits, as one of the most thrilling performers of his era, a superstar in the reign of happiness and confusion.”
That is the last two paragraphs of the chapter on this card or his young adult life which is fascinating and sort of sad.
My only regret is that my baseball-hating friends (yes I have many of them) would never pick this book up no matter how much I recommend it. The thing is, is that Josh Wilker’s writing is just fascinating on every level. Sadly I feel like the stigma that is attached to adults discussing baseball cards overshadows the fact that Wilker is an amazing writer, on par or better than the typical fiction that I have read recently. So I leave it to you…. baseball fans, casual or fanatic, well-read or not. Buy this book now, it’s damn amazing.
