When I reflect on my childhood, I find very few things that can compare to the thrill I experienced while opening each new wax pack of baseball cards. Between the chalky gum, the stats I would pour over, and the excitement of finding a card for one of my beloved Detroit Tigers, buying and opening wax packs was one of life's greatest pleasures.

I don't collect baseball cards anymore, but I do still enjoy watching the sport. This book took me down a nostalgia filled road trip (literally, as I read about the writer's travels, and figuratively, as old memories of favorite cards and highlight reel worthy baseball moments filled my head). I loved the overall concept and execution of this book, and I can't possibly recommend it highly enough for fellow baseball fans and old school wax pack collectors.

1986 was the year that I discovered baseball, so the premise of The Wax Pack immediately appealed. Brad Balukjian buys a pack of baseball cards from 1986, sealed in the old style wax wrapper, cracks it open and begins a journey to track down the random mix of major leaguers that he finds inside. One of them is a Met, the World Series winning team that I watched on Channel 4, a then still relatively new TV channel that had made a name for itself by broadcasting “minority sports”.

The author’s aim is to find out what happened after baseball. He has a pack of cards that cover unspectacular journeymen to Hall of Famers and he wants to find out what they did next, how they coped with the end of a career that is inevitably short. Again, it is a premise that appeals to me, it smacks a little of The Boys of Summer but less formal and more free form, because my relationship with baseball is not so simple as a love of the game, in fact for large periods the game itself has been mostly absent.

I have always been a fan of baseball stories as much as, to be honest more than, the actual three hours or so of gameplay. I quickly fell for Gary Carter, Daryl Strawberry and Doc Gooden as they won the World Series, but I also idolised Roy Hobbs, Crash Davis and Ricky Vaughn from the big screen and revelled in the stories of Shoeless Joe Jackson, Satchel Paige, Willie Mays and Tinker to Evers to Chance. In The Wax Pack Brad Balukjian has added to those stories, added to a fascination that has never left me despite living over three thousand miles from my nearest MLB stadium.

When writing a road trip book there has to be a balance to the narrative. Long hours are spent journeying (especially when driving around a country as vast as the USA), relatively fewer focus on the purpose of the journey, in this case 13 somewhat random baseball players, and the author’s personal story also inevitably bleeds into the account as it intersects with the interviews. Balukjian manages this well, revealing enough of himself to be engaging but without distracting from the main participants.

He also homes in on the individual stories, not being trapped by the mundane questioning of modern media savvy sports stars, but digging underneath to the real people and their authentic struggles. It is a fascinating insight into the human endeavour and the openness and honesty of the retired players is at times startling. This is a real tribute to the author who shows a genuine compassion for his subjects whilst continuing to pursue the difficult topics, the impacts of parents, both absent and present, the predictable temptations of being a ball player and the difficulty with coping both with the pressure of the game and the absence of it.

The only very slight niggle is when the author, maybe buoyed by the openness of some of his other interviewees, is a touch harsh on Carlton Fisk, the Hall of Famer, who didn’t feel so strong a need to join in his project. It is the one moment when his humility drops a little and a touch of petulance sneaks in, but I suppose when your self-funding stretches to a hefty fee for a few seconds at a signing event rejection can sting.

It certainly doesn’t detract from what is a thoroughly entertaining and insightful read though and I’m sure The Wax Pack will appeal to all baseball fans.

The premise of this book is unique and therefore perfect for it to stand out in a sea of sports journalism. People look up to ball papers but sometimes how they deal with life away from the spotlight can be more heroic.

I have a passing interest in baseball and wasn’t familiar with most of the players from the pack but that wasn’t a stumbling block due to enthusiasm of the author. Balukjian has an engaging style and a genuine interest in the backgrounds of the players and how it has affected their lives.

I found the section on the history of the cards & the Topps factory to be interesting and I loved the cover design to compliment the contents.

The concept of this book sounds very simple, yet it is one that is unique among sports books which are available. The author, Brad Balukjian, opens a pack of 1986 Topps baseball cards nearly 30 years after it was purchased (the book takes place in 2015) and sets out on a road trip to learn what each of the 14 players in the pack have done in their lives since the cards were issued. What follows is an amazing journey that the reader will enjoy while riding along with the author while he sets out to meet these players he calls the “Wax Pack.”

The fame and skills of the players range from a Hall of Fame player (Carlton Fisk) to those with very short and non-descript careers (Jamie Cocanower), from the very famous (Dwight Gooden) to the virtually forgotten (Al Cowens). Balukjian tells a story about each player, whether he actually talks to that man or not, that usually has little to do with baseball and more to do with what has happened to each man after baseball. These can range from very uplifting and inspiring, as was the case for this reviewer when reading about Gary Templeton’s story, to very poignant and heartbreaking, such as Cocanower’s revelation about his wife’s diagnosis of cancer and the tragedy that befell the family of Randy Ready. Some men still sound angry, such as Vince Coleman, while some are still very happy with what the game provided them, such as Rick Sutcliffe.

The most entertaining stories are two in which he did not speak to the player for an interview, but it wasn’t for the lack of trying. In one, Balukjian ended up attending a Houston Astros game and was close to meeting Gary Petis, who was working as the third base coach of the Astros at the time. How he ended up at the game makes for an entertaining story, as does Balukjian’s adventure of trying to connect with Fisk. There are actually two chapters on this as after failing to connect with Fisk at his home, Balukjian drives out to Cooperstown for the 2015 Hall of Fame induction weekend and spends $60 for the chance to meet Fisk for about 30 seconds while Fisk signed his card. What Balukjian does in that very quick encounter was probably the funniest story in the entire book – but alas, it did not get the desired result as Fisk still does not provide that story for the author.

The author’s own personal story, however, is also intertwined throughout his road trip and it adds special meaning to his meetings with the former baseball players. He describes his relationship with his parents throughout the book, leading up to a “Field of Dreams”-esque meeting with his father. He also makes a side trip to visit an old girlfriend, the only one that he mentions in the book but a woman for whom he still believes was the best one he had. Both of these stories will make the reader have the same gamut of emotions that his meetings with the players evoked.

One last item that should be mentioned about the book – it begins and ends with descriptions of how the cards and bubble gum are packaged, complete with a short story of an employee who works in the factory that packages the cards. Anyone who has tasted the bubble gum – a term used loosely to describe that hard stick – can relate to Balukjian’s torture when he consumed the gum.

Those baseball fans who had in their possession baseball cards at one time or another will certainly want to read this book, but one does not have to be a baseball fan to thoroughly enjoy this book that is not only thought-provoking but also emotion-provoking as the reader will fell a large range of emotions while reading it.

I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball's Afterlife by Brad Balukjian was an interesting baseball retrospective told in the most unique way. The author collected baseball cards as a kid during the peak of card collecting in the late 80s/early 90s. I'm married to a childhood baseball card collector (who has also rekindled his love), so this is a connection that was familiar to me. In the story, the author decides to take a random pack of baseball cards and see whatever became of the players on the cards that are inside. What follows is a truly unique cross-country adventure. Some of these men are easier to track down than others, and there is a variance who is willing to talk. With each man, he walks through the statistics and related career highlights. However, his quest isn't about the numbers, rather he is seeking to find out who these men are as humans. He wants to know who they were when they played, but more than that, he wants to know about the life they found after their playing days were over. This was a fascinating read as each card/player was so different. The author often found himself going to places the player loved, and it was so neat to see these men in their true element. Not only that, it was interesting to see how the author also saw connections in his own life, and he did his own self-work as he traveled. If you are like my husband and the author and baseball cards bring back a certain nostalgia for you, this is a book that will totally put you in your throwback feels. If you're just a fan of the game like me, you'll also probably dig this one. This is just such a wonderful collection of stories about humans who happened to be really great at baseball for awhile.

The inventive premise used by the author created a fun and nostalgic read about an era of baseball that seems to be overlooked. The majority of the players involved with this book are not household names, but that is the beauty of this book. The reader is able to learn about the life of a baseball player both during their playing career and their life after the game. The spirit of each player comes through effectively and the narrative flows seamlessly from player to player.

This is a fun, nostalgic book about one man's attempt to visit and interview all of the baseball players that came out of a tops baseball card pack from the 1980's.  What a great idea for a book.  I loved the interviews with the various players.  The only thing I didn't enjoy about the book was the over-emphasis on the author's personal life as he traveled from place to place to conduct the interviews.  At times I felt lost in these details.  

Overall a great book- I would love a second installment.  It would be fun to see the author do some Fleer cards or Donruss.

Most sports book you read have something in common or retrace common themes but every so often you find something totally original and the premise of The Wax Pack certainly is something that I doubt has ever been written about before.

Take a random box of bubblegum from the mid 80s - a time when the author collected the baseball cards within and retrace the lives of the 14 players featured.

This the author does and commences a wonderful nostalgic voyage of discovery both for the players who have long since left the spotlight in which they once shone but more importantly for Brad Balukjian himself who faces the demons and lost opportunities and tries also to come to terms with his OCD.

The book is reaffirming, at times full of hope and optimism but at others deeply painful and hard to read.

What also made it hard to read was that this was ARC Kindle download where almost every page was riddled with typos and missing letters and words.

Sometimes I was guessing what was on the page but I could certainly decipher the gist of what this talented writer intended his readers to digest.

This was certainly far more palatable than the 30 year old bubblegum that he struggled to masticate before he left on this powerful and magical voyage of discovery.