When Old Cardboard Turns Into a Mirror- NY Times April 4, 2009 [Archive]

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04-05-2009, 10:08 AM

Posted By: Bruce DorskindWhen Old Cardboard Turns Into a Mirror By GREG HANLON Published: April 4, 2009 In a recent post on his blog, Cardboardgods.net, Josh Wilker recalled a moment some years ago when his aunt asked him to give his treasured baseball card collection to his young cousin. Keep up with the latest news on The Timess baseball blog. His mother floated the idea that I could make the little boy happy by passing on my little-boy artifacts on to him, Wilker, now 41, wrote. I let the hint hang in the air without replying. I was a grown man, but I didnt want to let go. Many American men can empathize with that sentiment. But Wilkers cards are not just sitting in his mothers attic collecting dust. Rather, through his blog and a book deal that has emerged from it, Wilker has spun his collection into literary gold. Cardboardgods.net is the story of a man and his baseball cards. It has existed under various domain names since 2006, and with its wit, insight and emotional power, it draws a cult following of about 700 viewers a day. (Wilkers site is distinct from another baseball card Web site, Cardboardgods.com.) Wilker, who works part time as an editor and proofreader in Chicago, has achieved minimal commercial success as a writer. But because of his Web site, he recently signed a contract to write a literary memoir. Tentatively called Cardboard Gods, it is scheduled to be published by Seven Footer Press in the spring of 2010. Its about a somewhat directionless guy who has held on to one thing his whole life, which has helped him keep himself together, he said of the book and the blog in a recent interview. On the blog, Wilker posts a scanned image of a card, usually from his collecting heyday of the mid- to late-1970s, picturing a hirsute god in polyester double-knits. He then uses it as a jumping-off point for his autobiographical reflections, essentially telling his life story through his baseball cards. For instance, he uses the Hall of Famer Willie Stargells 1978 card to contrast his own peripatetic employment history with the stability of Stargells career spent entirely with the Pittsburgh Pirates. If ones employment experiences could be transposed into baseball card statistics, the back of my own card could serve as a polar opposite to the back of Willie Stargells, he wrote, contrasting the repeated word Pirates on the back of Stargells card with the litany of transience that would be found on the back of his. The lyricism of his writing comes out in his description of a striking Nolan Ryan card from 1980, which shows the legendary flamethrower driving toward home plate. The card coincided with Wilkers transition from what he portrays as an idyllic childhood to a complicated adolescence. A 12-year-old kid who had played his final year of Little League and gone through his first demoralizing year of junior high school could walk home from the store where he bought this card and hold this card and feel like he was holding a little piece of lightning from another world, he wrote. Wilker first started writing about his cards in 1999 while working as an adjunct creative writing professor at Johnson State College in Vermont and living in a cabin without electricity or running water. Without much else for stimulation, he found himself staring at his baseball cards by a kerosene lamp, inspired to write by childhood memories that the cards stirred up. He described the title of his blog and planned book as something that speaks to my flimsy purchase on a spiritual life. But more than anything, the cardboard gods serve as a nostalgic touchstone. However Im feeling in my life, I can come to some solid ground if I just sit and stare at a baseball card and think about it, and let it take me different places, he said.