Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball's Afterlife

By Brad Balukjian

Book Overview

A Los Angeles Times Best Seller
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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1496218744
• ISBN13: 9781496218742
• Release Date: April 2020
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 1.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.3" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

One Pack, a Thousand Memories

The Wax Pack is a beautifully nostalgic and surprisingly moving journey, not just through baseball, but through memory, identity, and the often-unseen lives of professional athletes. As someone who grew up trading cards, chewing that terrible pink gum, and chasing down missing cards at card shows, this book felt like a time machine to my childhood. The premise is delightfully simple: open a single pack of 1986 Topps baseball cards and track down every player in it. But what unfolds is far more profound. Brad Balukjian takes us along on a literal road trip across America as he meets the men behind the cards, some who found stardom, others who faded quietly away. Along the way, he weaves in his own personal reflections, creating a heartfelt narrative that mirrors the hopes and heartbreaks of the players he encounters. The writing strikes a perfect balance between fun and thoughtful, and it reminded me of the sheer joy, and obsession, of collecting, trading, and playing the game. If you ever pored over stats on the back of a card, made lopsided trades with friends, or dreamed through the lens of baseball, The Wax Pack will feel like home. It’s a love letter to the game and the boys we once were.