While we won’t be seeing actual Major League Baseball this week, there’s no shortage of new baseball books coming out to help fill the gap between what would have been Opening Day on Thursday and the season’s eventual delayed start.
Only one of those baseball books, however, is the result of a 30-state road trip. Brad Balukjian, author of The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife, drove 11,341 miles in 49 days in 2015 to meet 13 retired baseball players from a previously unopened pack of baseball cards from 1986, including former Brewers Jaime Cocanower and Randy Ready. The result is a book described as “part baseball nostalgia, part road trip travelogue, and all heart.” The Wax Pack comes out on April 1, and we talked to Balukjian about his experiences writing it.
KL: So, starting from the top, what gave you the idea to go on a road trip to meet players you had seen in a pack of baseball cards?
BB: Well, a couple of things. One was that I realized that I’m still a big baseball fan, but I don’t really know the players like I did as a kid. I’m 39, and from that era in the ‘80s we knew those guys so well because of their cards, their stats and everything else. So I was at a game and I remember thinking, “I still follow baseball, but I don’t really know these players,” and it got me thinking about the guys that I did know, which were the ones from the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s and thinking about, “Where are they? What happened to them?”
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
I think that general “Where are they now?” theme is sort of universally interesting and attractive. Also, my favorite players were kind of the journeyman, underdog guys, and so I’ve always wanted to write about them and learn more about them because their stories just haven’t been told, no one is asking. So, I had this idea, a wax pack, a pack of [baseball] cards, is this perfect device for a book. It even kind of looks like a book: It’s got 15 cards, 15 chapters, and I love the randomness of it where you’re going to get a mix of players and most of them are not going to be superstars just because of probability.
I had this idea to kind of use the pack as a device to really find out what happened to these guys, where they ended up. It was beautiful because the book ended up evolving into so much more once I got out there and started doing the trip, because there were all these themes that I didn’t necessarily expect. Fathers and sons, and the notion of heroism and what that means, and it kind of blew up from there.
KL: Were there any specific players you were hoping to find when you opened that pack?
BB: Oh yeah. I ended up picking a pack that had my favorite player, my hero as a kid, Don Carman. Not someone that’s very memorable, but that was big draw for me, being able to meet my childhood hero and see what he’s like now that I’m an adult.
KL: The list of players you attempted to reach in the book includes some players that had some fame, some All Stars, but also some guys with somewhat checkered reputations. Was there anyone in there you were nervous to go meet?
BB: Yeah. And I talk a lot about my feelings around that in the book itself, because I kind of want to put the reader in my shoes and know that as excited as I was, I was also scared to death about certain things. With Carlton Fisk, who wouldn’t talk to me, I built a chapter about this elaborate plan that I had to pretend I’m a millionaire to ambush him on this private golf course.
So, there were a lot of situations where I was worried about what would happen, or if I could get to a guy and how he would react. Vince Coleman wouldn’t talk to me. And then there were some guys who would talk to me where I was going to ask some pretty tough questions, like asking Garry Templeton about having an illegitimate child that I had seen reference to in my research. Or Randy Ready’s wife, who had this terrible heart attack and trying to find out what happened to her. So, I knew I was going to broach some really uncomfortable subjects, where it could go really south.
But I’m proud to say I did bring those things up, and they’re all in the book, about what happened.
KL: A couple of years ago I interviewed another guy that was going on a different kind of crazy road trip, visiting all 30 MLB stadiums in 36 days. One of the questions I had for him was, “What have you done to build up to driving a 10,000 mile road trip?” Had you taken long road trips before this one?
|
|
BB: I had. I had gone across the country a few times with friends, and my dad. I had some experience with that. I just like travel and going to places and towns that a lot of people aren’t used to going to. I can’t say that I “trained,” per se, but it helped that I drank 123 cups of coffee along the way, which I document in each chapter.
KL: Your book has generated a lot of positive feedback and reviews. Do you have a favorite review, or a favorite thing someone has said about it?
BB: I’m grateful to all the people and flattered by all the praise, because I’m not a sportswriter, I don’t really have any connections in that world, so these very big name people being willing to read a stranger’s book and write a blurb about it, I’m very flattered by that.
I think, of the ones I saw, I was most flattered by Susan Orlean, who is not a baseball or sports writer at all, and she wrote The Orchid Thief, which got made into the movie Adaptation. She’s a runaway New York Times best-selling writer who does the style of writing I do, narrative non-fiction. I am most pleased with that, because I always wanted to get the point across that this is not a baseball book, it really has broad appeal to anyone interested in a good general interest story. It’s really about relationships and people and these bigger themes. I think the fact that she read it as a non-sports fan and had such high praise, to me was a really good sign.
In her blurb for the book Orlean describes The Wax Pack as "A wonderful journey that opens into an exploration of sports, nostalgia, American culture, and memory, The Wax Pack will surprise and engage you. It’s a delight to read and a tribute to the power of curiosity.”
KL: It’s been a few years now since your 10,000 mile road trip. Obviously right now probably wouldn’t be the right time to take it on again but if you had the opportunity to do something like this again, would you?
BB: I say in the book at the end that I don’t think I would ever do a sequel. I’m really not interested in doing it again, because I don’t think it could be as good as the original. I think it’s kind of a unique experience, but that spirit of discovery and adventure that I embody in the book is something I definitely want to tap into again.
I’m always interested in writing about things that scale up to bigger, sort of common universal themes about being human. In this case it’s a book about lost innocence, growing up and fathers and sons. So, where I can find a way into those themes, that’s what I’m interested in pursuing. If it takes me on the road, even better. I like that kind of travel writing.
The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife comes out on April 1. Balukjian is on Twitter as @WaxPackBook.
