1 of 1 copy available
A 2020 NPR Best Book of the Year
Is there life after baseball? Starting from this simple question, The Wax Pack ends up with something much bigger and unexpected—a meditation on the loss of innocence and the gift of impermanence, for both Brad Balukjian and the former ballplayers he tracked down. To get a truly random sample of players, Balukjian followed this wildly absurd but fun-as-hell premise: he took a single pack of baseball cards from 1986 (the first year he collected cards), opened it, chewed the nearly thirty-year-old gum inside, gagged, and then embarked on a quest to find all the players in the pack.
On Balukjian's trip in the summer of 2015, he spanned 11,341 miles through thirty states in forty-eight days. Actively engaging with his subjects, he took a hitting lesson from Rance Mulliniks, watched kung fu movies with Garry Templeton, and went to the zoo with Don Carman. In the process of finding all the players but one, he discovered an astonishing range of experiences and untold stories in their post-baseball lives. While crisscrossing the country, Balukjian retraced his own past, reconnecting with lost loves and coming to terms with his lifelong battle with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Alternately elegiac and uplifting, The Wax Pack is part baseball nostalgia, part road trip travelogue, and all heart, a reminder that greatness is not found in the stats on the backs of baseball cards but in the personal stories of the men on the front of them.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 1, 2020 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781496221506
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781496221506
- File size: 3660 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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February 28, 2020
Imagine buying a pack of baseball cards from the mid-1980s. Each pack has 14 random cards, many of which feature players you do not know. In this fascinating book, Balukjian (Merritt Coll., CA) describes how he tracked down every single player in the pack, an adventure that led him to travel thousands of miles through 30 U.S. states. One by one, the author locates the players, and through this journey readers learn about the extraordinary experiences of athletes such as Rance Mullikins, Steve Yeager, Gary Templeton, and Rick Sutcliffe. While not everyone featured here is a baseball superstar, all of the stories offer captivating tidbits for fans of the sport. VERDICT Will appeal not only to baseball fans but also to enthusiasts of sports history nostalgic for a bygone era.--Gus Palas, Ela Area P.L., Lake Zurich, IL
Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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