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The Baseball Reliquary, South Pasadena Public
Library,
and Friends of the South Pasadena Public Library
Present
AUTHOR NIGHT WITH
JOSH WILKER
Thursday, June 10, 2010, 7:00 pm
South Pasadena Public Library
1115 El Centro St., South Pasadena, California
In conjunction with the Baseball
Reliquary’s exhibition, Son of Cardboard
Fetish, the Reliquary, South Pasadena Public
Library, and Friends of the South Pasadena
Public Library present “Author Night with Josh
Wilker” on Thursday, June 10, at 7:00 pm. The
location of the event will be the South Pasadena
Public Library Community Room, 1115 El Centro
St., South Pasadena, California. Admission is
free and open to the public; no tickets or
reservations are necessary. Doors will open at
6:30 pm and refreshments will be served.
A Chicago resident, Josh Wilker will
discuss his newly-published memoir, Cardboard
Gods: An All-American Tale Told Through Baseball
Cards (Seven Footer Press, New York, 2010),
and will sign copies, which will be available
for purchase. Wilker writes regularly about his
childhood baseball cards at cardboardgods.net.
Since his first posting in 2006, his site has
been featured in the New York Times, the
Chicago Sun-Times, and ESPN.com. He is a
recipient of the Howard Frank Mosher Prize for
Short Fiction and has an MFA from Vermont
College.
“Author Night with Josh Wilker” is supported, in
part, by a grant from the Los Angeles County
Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles
County Arts Commission. Special thanks to the
Arroyo Vista Inn for providing accommodations.
The following description is from the
dust jacket of Cardboard Gods:
For anyone who ever held them. . .
and
dreamed about the future.
For anyone who ever held them. . .
and
dreamed about the past.
More than baseball cards, they were. . .
Cardboard Gods
Cardboard
Gods
is a baseball-haunted memoir that charges
forward with the momentum of a classic
coming-of-age novel through a collection of
portraits of Topps baseball cards from
1974-1981. From superstars like Reggie Jackson
and Johnny Bench to legends like Thurman Munson
and Steve Garvey to oddly charismatic historical
footnotes like José Morales and David Clyde to
nondescript benchwarmers like Mike Cosgrove and
Eddie Leon that only a child holding a card in
their likeness could love, Josh captures and
illuminates the era of 1970s baseball with
stunning detail, pathos, and hilarity, finding
something very large in the seemingly small.
Josh shares his observations about the players
of his youth while telling his own story. He
uses the magical bubble-blowing powers of
journeyman Kurt Bevacqua to shed light on the
weakening of the powerful childhood bond with
his older brother; he considers the utopian
back-to-the-land 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; he expands beyond the limitations of
his life with an imagined correspondence with
his favorite player, Carl Yastrzemski.
What emerges in the passionate celebration of
baseball is a gorgeous family chronicle about
the relationship between two brothers as it
evolves from boyhood to adolescence and beyond.
At once funny, moving, and deeply evocative,
Cardboard Gods asks the question, “What if
what’s gone can return?”
Josh Wilker
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