Cardboard Gods
An All-American Tale Told through Baseball Cards
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $14.20
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Jim Meskimen
-
By:
-
Josh Wilker
About this listen
Cardboard Gods is the memoir of Josh Wilker, a brilliant writer who has marked the stages of his life through the baseball cards he collected as a child. It also captures the experience of growing up obsessed with baseball cards and explores what it means to be a fan of the game. Along the way, as we get to know Josh, his family, and his friends, we also get Josh’s classic observations about the central artifacts from his life - the baseball cards themselves. Josh writes about an imagined correspondence with his favorite player, Carl Yastrzemski; he uses the magical bubble-blowing powers of journeyman Kurt Bevacqua to shed light on the weakening of the powerful childhood bond with his older brother; he considers the doomed utopian back-to-the-land dreams of his hippie parents against the backdrop of inimitable 1970s baseball figures such as “Designated Pinch Runner” Herb Washington and Mark “The Bird” Fidrych.
Cardboard Gods is more than just the story of a man who can’t let go of his past, it’s proof that - to paraphrase Jim Bouton - as children we grow up holding baseball cards but in the end we realize that it’s really the other way around. ©2010 Josh Wilker (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Mint Condition
- How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession
- By: Dave Jamieson
- Narrated by: Kevin Young
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When award-winning journalist Dave Jamieson's parents sold his childhood home a few years ago, he rediscovered a prized boyhood possession: his baseball card collection. Now was the time to cash in on the investments of his youth. But all the card shops had closed, and cards were selling for next to nothing online. What had happened?
-
-
Great Book
- By Peter Lutz on 07-17-16
By: Dave Jamieson
-
The Baseball 100
- By: Joe Posnanski
- Narrated by: Cary Hite
- Length: 30 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Longer than Moby-Dick and nearly as ambitious,The Baseball 100 is a one-of-a-kind work by award-winning sportswriter and lifelong student of the game Joe Posnanski that tells the story of the sport through the remarkable lives of its 100 greatest players. In the book’s introduction, Pulitzer Prize-winning commentator George F. Will marvels, “Posnanski must already have lived more than 200 years. How else could he have acquired such a stock of illuminating facts and entertaining stories about the rich history of this endlessly fascinating sport?”
-
-
Just OK. Too Tangential & Distracting
- By Matthew R. on 01-21-23
By: Joe Posnanski
-
Ball Four
- The Final Pitch
- By: Jim Bouton
- Narrated by: Jim Bouton
- Length: 18 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Ball Four was published in 1970, it created a firestorm. Bouton was called a Judas, a Benedict Arnold and a “social leper” for having violated the “sanctity of the clubhouse.” Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying the book wasn’t true. Ballplayers, most of whom hadn’t read it, denounced the book. It was even banned by a few libraries. Almost everyone else, however, loved Ball Four.
-
-
Three Ten Year Updates Give Bouton a 5th Star
- By Byron on 08-09-12
By: Jim Bouton
-
The Last Folk Hero
- The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson
- By: Jeff Pearlman
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 22 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, the greatest athlete of all time streaked across American sports and popular culture. Stadiums struggled to contain him. Clocks failed to capture his speed. His strength was legendary. His power unmatched. Video game makers turned him into an invincible character—and they were dead-on. He climbed (and walked across) walls, splintered baseball bats over his knee, turned oncoming tacklers into ground meat.
-
-
If you are a sports fan and over 35 years old, you have to listen/read this. Awesome!
- By betty sammons on 06-29-23
By: Jeff Pearlman
-
Gambler
- Secrets from a Life at Risk
- By: Billy Walters
- Narrated by: Billy Walters
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anybody can get lucky. Nobody controls the odds like Billy Walters. Widely regarded as “the Michael Jordan of sports betting,” Walters is a living legend in Las Vegas and among sports bettors worldwide. With an unmatched winning streak of thirty-six consecutive years, Walters has become fabulously wealthy by placing hundreds of millions of dollars a year in gross wagers, including one Super Bowl bet of $3.5 million alone. Competitors desperate to crack his betting techniques have tried hacking his phones, cloning his beepers, rifling through his trash, and bribing his employees.
-
-
Good but
- By Amazon Customer on 08-30-23
By: Billy Walters
-
Why We Love Baseball
- A History in 50 Moments
- By: Joe Posnanski
- Narrated by: Joe Posnanski, Ellen Adair
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times bestselling author Joe Posnanski is back with a masterful ode to the game: a countdown of 50 of the most memorable moments in baseball’s history, to make you fall in love with the sport all over again. Posnanski writes of major moments that created legends, and of forgotten moments almost lost to time. It's Willie Mays’s catch, Babe Ruth’s called shot, and Kirk Gibson’s limping home run; the slickest steals; the biggest bombs; and the most triumphant no-hitters.
-
-
Narration
- By Peter on 01-10-24
By: Joe Posnanski
-
Mint Condition
- How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession
- By: Dave Jamieson
- Narrated by: Kevin Young
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When award-winning journalist Dave Jamieson's parents sold his childhood home a few years ago, he rediscovered a prized boyhood possession: his baseball card collection. Now was the time to cash in on the investments of his youth. But all the card shops had closed, and cards were selling for next to nothing online. What had happened?
-
-
Great Book
- By Peter Lutz on 07-17-16
By: Dave Jamieson
-
The Baseball 100
- By: Joe Posnanski
- Narrated by: Cary Hite
- Length: 30 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Longer than Moby-Dick and nearly as ambitious,The Baseball 100 is a one-of-a-kind work by award-winning sportswriter and lifelong student of the game Joe Posnanski that tells the story of the sport through the remarkable lives of its 100 greatest players. In the book’s introduction, Pulitzer Prize-winning commentator George F. Will marvels, “Posnanski must already have lived more than 200 years. How else could he have acquired such a stock of illuminating facts and entertaining stories about the rich history of this endlessly fascinating sport?”
-
-
Just OK. Too Tangential & Distracting
- By Matthew R. on 01-21-23
By: Joe Posnanski
-
Ball Four
- The Final Pitch
- By: Jim Bouton
- Narrated by: Jim Bouton
- Length: 18 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Ball Four was published in 1970, it created a firestorm. Bouton was called a Judas, a Benedict Arnold and a “social leper” for having violated the “sanctity of the clubhouse.” Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying the book wasn’t true. Ballplayers, most of whom hadn’t read it, denounced the book. It was even banned by a few libraries. Almost everyone else, however, loved Ball Four.
-
-
Three Ten Year Updates Give Bouton a 5th Star
- By Byron on 08-09-12
By: Jim Bouton
-
The Last Folk Hero
- The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson
- By: Jeff Pearlman
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 22 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, the greatest athlete of all time streaked across American sports and popular culture. Stadiums struggled to contain him. Clocks failed to capture his speed. His strength was legendary. His power unmatched. Video game makers turned him into an invincible character—and they were dead-on. He climbed (and walked across) walls, splintered baseball bats over his knee, turned oncoming tacklers into ground meat.
-
-
If you are a sports fan and over 35 years old, you have to listen/read this. Awesome!
- By betty sammons on 06-29-23
By: Jeff Pearlman
-
Gambler
- Secrets from a Life at Risk
- By: Billy Walters
- Narrated by: Billy Walters
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anybody can get lucky. Nobody controls the odds like Billy Walters. Widely regarded as “the Michael Jordan of sports betting,” Walters is a living legend in Las Vegas and among sports bettors worldwide. With an unmatched winning streak of thirty-six consecutive years, Walters has become fabulously wealthy by placing hundreds of millions of dollars a year in gross wagers, including one Super Bowl bet of $3.5 million alone. Competitors desperate to crack his betting techniques have tried hacking his phones, cloning his beepers, rifling through his trash, and bribing his employees.
-
-
Good but
- By Amazon Customer on 08-30-23
By: Billy Walters
-
Why We Love Baseball
- A History in 50 Moments
- By: Joe Posnanski
- Narrated by: Joe Posnanski, Ellen Adair
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times bestselling author Joe Posnanski is back with a masterful ode to the game: a countdown of 50 of the most memorable moments in baseball’s history, to make you fall in love with the sport all over again. Posnanski writes of major moments that created legends, and of forgotten moments almost lost to time. It's Willie Mays’s catch, Babe Ruth’s called shot, and Kirk Gibson’s limping home run; the slickest steals; the biggest bombs; and the most triumphant no-hitters.
-
-
Narration
- By Peter on 01-10-24
By: Joe Posnanski
-
The Soul of Baseball
- A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America
- By: Joe Posnanski
- Narrated by: David Sadzin
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Soul of Baseball is as much the story of Buck O'Neil as it is the story of baseball. Driven by a relentless optimism and his two great passions - for America's pastime and for jazz, America's music - O'Neil played solely for love. In an era when greedy, steroid-enhanced athletes have come to characterize professional ball, Posnanski offers a salve for the damaged spirit: the uplifting life lessons of a truly extraordinary man who never missed an opportunity to enjoy and love life.
-
-
Buck O’Neil fan!!
- By scott on 04-24-20
By: Joe Posnanski
-
The Tao of the Backup Catcher
- Playing Baseball for the Love of the Game
- By: Tim Brown, Erik Kratz - contributor
- Narrated by: Justin Price, Tim Brown
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In baseball there are superstars and stars and everyday players and then there are the rest. Within the rest are role players and specialists and journeymen and then there are the backup catchers. The Tao of the Backup Catcher is about them, the backup catchers, who exist near the bottom of the roster and the end of the bench and between the numbers in a sport–and a society–increasingly driven by cold, hard analytics.
-
-
A great story
- By Will on 05-03-24
By: Tim Brown, and others
-
The Era, 1947-1957
- When the Yankees, the Dodgers, and the Giants Ruled the World
- By: Roger Kahn
- Narrated by: Allan Robertson
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Celebrated sports writer Roger Kahn casts his gaze on the golden age of baseball, an unforgettable time when the game thrived as America's unrivaled national sport. The Era begins in 1947, with Jackie Robinson changing major league baseball forever by taking the field for the Dodgers. Dazzling, momentous events characterize the decade that followed....
-
-
Highly recommend.
- By Robert Dana on 05-15-21
By: Roger Kahn
-
Ty Cobb
- A Terrible Beauty
- By: Charles Leerhsen
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ty Cobb is baseball royalty, maybe even the greatest player who ever lived. His lifetime batting average is still the highest of all time, and when he retired in 1928, after twenty-one years with the Detroit Tigers and two with the Philadelphia Athletics, he held more than ninety records. But the numbers don't tell half of Cobb's tale. The Georgia Peach was by far the most thrilling player of the era: "Ty Cobb could cause more excitement with a base on balls than Babe Ruth could with a grand slam," one columnist wrote.
-
-
Two Cobb Books, One Review of a Maligned Legacy
- By Jonathan Love on 05-17-16
By: Charles Leerhsen
-
The Bad Guys Won
- A Season of Brawling, Boozing, Bimbo Chasing, and Championship Baseball with Straw, Doc, Mookie, Nails, the Kid, and the Rest of the 1986 Mets, the Rowdiest Team Ever to Put on a New York Uniform - and Maybe the Best
- By: Jeff Pearlman
- Narrated by: Jeff Pearlman
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It was 1986, and the New York Mets won 108 regular-season games and the World Series, capturing the hearts (and other assorted body parts) of fans everywhere. But their greatness on the field was nearly eclipsed by how bad they were off it. Led by the indomitable Keith Hernandez and the young dynamic duo of Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, along with the gallant Scum Bunch, the Amazin's left a wide trail of wreckage in their wake-hotel rooms, charter planes, a bar in Houston, and most famously Bill Buckner and the hated Boston Red Sox.
-
-
Maybe 3.5
- By Lifeisshort on 02-15-22
By: Jeff Pearlman
-
The Cost of These Dreams
- Sports Stories and Other Serious Business
- By: Wright Thompson
- Narrated by: Wright Thompson
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There is only one Wright Thompson. He is, as they say, famous if you know who he is: his work includes the most-read articles in the history of ESPN (and it's not even close) and has been anthologized in the Best American Sports Writing series ten times, and he counts John Grisham and Richard Ford among his ardent admirers. But to say his pieces are about sports, while true as far as it goes, is like saying Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is a book about a cattle drive.
-
-
Just great
- By ACK on 06-02-19
By: Wright Thompson
-
Baseball
- By: Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns
- Narrated by: Ken Burns
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The authors of the acclaimed and best-selling The Civil War, Jazz, and The War turn to another uniquely American phenomenon: baseball. Geoffrey C. Ward's and Ken Burns’s moving and fascinating history of the game goes beyond stolen bases, double plays, and home runs to demonstrate how baseball has been influenced by, and has in turn influenced, American life.
-
-
Abridged
- By David Munoz on 02-15-16
By: Geoffrey C. Ward, and others
-
The Boys of Summer
- The Classic Narrative of Growing Up Within Shouting Distance of Ebbets Field, Covering the Jackie Robinson Dodgers, and What's Happened to Everybody Since
- By: Roger Kahn
- Narrated by: Phil Gigante
- Length: 15 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is a story about young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and then went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the team that broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is a story by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. This is the story about what happened to the team when their glory days were behind them.
-
-
Classic book!
- By Christopher Arthur on 11-19-17
By: Roger Kahn
-
The Bronx Zoo
- The Astonishing Inside Story of the 1978 World Champion New York Yankees
- By: Sparky Lyle, Peter Golenbock
- Narrated by: Sparky Lyle
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This best-selling, highly-acclaimed account is a hilarious but scathing baseball tell-all. After being voted the 1977 American League Cy Young Award winner, Sparky Lyle was rewarded for his efforts by being benched. The Yankees, a leader of free agency, signed Goose Gossage as their closer. Things only went downhill from there and the 1978 season turned out to be one of controversy, firings, fights, and acrimony. In short, it was a zoo.
-
-
10 Hours of Incessant Whining
- By Read With My Ears on 04-24-21
By: Sparky Lyle, and others
-
Rickey
- The Life and Legend of an American Original
- By: Howard Bryant
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 18 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few names in the history of baseball evoke the excellence and dynamism that Rickey Henderson’s does. He holds the record for the most stolen bases in a single game, and he’s scored more runs than any player ever. “If you cut Rickey Henderson in half, you’d have two Hall of Famers,” the baseball historian Bill James once said. But perhaps even more than his prowess on the field, Rickey Henderson’s is a story of Oakland, California, the town that gave rise to so many legendary athletes like him.
-
-
An All Time Grewt
- By Anonymous User on 10-09-23
By: Howard Bryant
-
Imperfect
- An Improbable Life
- By: Jim Abbott, Tim Brown
- Narrated by: Jim Abbott
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Imperfect, Jim Abbot retraces his remarkable journey. Born without a right hand, Jim Abbott as a boy dreamed of being a great athlete. Raised in Flint, Michigan, by parents who saw in his condition not a disability but an extraordinary opportunity, Jim became a two-sport standout in high school, then an ace pitcher for the University of Michigan. But his journey was only beginning. By 21, he’d won the gold medal game at the 1988 Olympics and cracked the starting rotation of the California Angels....
-
-
A Must for Parents of Kids with All Abilities
- By Jonathan Love on 03-15-17
By: Jim Abbott, and others
-
The Last Hero
- A Life of Henry Aaron
- By: Howard Bryant
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 21 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 34 years since his retirement, Henry Aaron’s reputation has only grown in magnitude: He broke existing records (rbis, total bases, extra-base hits) and set new ones (hitting at least 30 home runs per season 15 times, becoming the first player in history to hammer 500 home runs and three thousand hits). But his influence extends beyond statistics, and at long last here is the first definitive biography of one of baseball’s immortal figures.
-
-
GREAT STORY but blame the producers for misreads
- By Eddie38 on 03-02-22
By: Howard Bryant
Critic reviews
Related to this topic
-
The Cost of These Dreams
- Sports Stories and Other Serious Business
- By: Wright Thompson
- Narrated by: Wright Thompson
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There is only one Wright Thompson. He is, as they say, famous if you know who he is: his work includes the most-read articles in the history of ESPN (and it's not even close) and has been anthologized in the Best American Sports Writing series ten times, and he counts John Grisham and Richard Ford among his ardent admirers. But to say his pieces are about sports, while true as far as it goes, is like saying Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is a book about a cattle drive.
-
-
Just great
- By ACK on 06-02-19
By: Wright Thompson
-
One Shot at Forever
- A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season
- By: Chris Ballard
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1971, a small-town high school baseball team from rural Illinois playing with hand-me-down uniforms and peace signs on their hats defied convention and the odds. Led by an English teacher with no coaching experience, the Macon Ironmen emerged from a field of 370 teams to become the smallest school in Illinois history to make the state final, a distinction that still stands. There, sporting long hair, and warming up to "Jesus Christ Superstar", the Ironmen would play a dramatic game that would change their lives forever.
-
-
Outstanding.
- By Cartman18 on 08-02-13
By: Chris Ballard
-
Molina
- The Story of the Father Who Raised an Unlikely Baseball Dynasty
- By: Bengie Molina, Joan Ryan
- Narrated by: Henry Leyva
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A baseball rules book. A tape measure. A lottery ticket. These were in the pocket of Bengie Molina's father when he died of a heart attack on the rutted Little League field in his Puerto Rican barrio. The items serve as thematic guideposts in Molina's beautiful memoir about his father, who, through baseball, taught his three sons about loyalty, humility, courage, and the true meaning of success.
-
-
A book about life
- By P. Griswold on 06-11-15
By: Bengie Molina, and others
-
The Chicken Runs at Midnight
- A Daughter’s Message from Heaven That Changed a Father’s Heart and Won a World Series
- By: Tom Friend, Tim Kurkjian - foreword
- Narrated by: Ben Holland - foreword, Mark Schlicher
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Weaving baseball history with personal memoir, this book is one that will make you thrill to victory, believe in hope, stand up to cheer for what is good in peoples' lives. It's a powerful story of redemption and faith that reminds us that God can work in our lives even when we think it's too late to change - and sometimes he sends us signs from heaven if we only have eyes to see.
-
-
not really a sport's fan
- By virginia loranger on 09-24-20
By: Tom Friend, and others
-
The Boys of Summer
- The Classic Narrative of Growing Up Within Shouting Distance of Ebbets Field, Covering the Jackie Robinson Dodgers, and What's Happened to Everybody Since
- By: Roger Kahn
- Narrated by: Phil Gigante
- Length: 15 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is a story about young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and then went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the team that broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is a story by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. This is the story about what happened to the team when their glory days were behind them.
-
-
Classic book!
- By Christopher Arthur on 11-19-17
By: Roger Kahn
-
The Ride of Our Lives
- Roadside Lessons of an American Family
- By: Mike Leonard
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mike Leonard is a lucky man. It’s not everyone who gets parents like Jack and Marge. At 87, Jack is a pathological optimist with an inexhaustible gift of gab. Marge, Jack’s bride of 60 years, though cut from the same rough bolt of Irish immigrant cloth, is his polar opposite - pessimistic and proud of it. What was their son, Mike, thinking when he took a sabbatical from his job with NBC News so he could pile these two world-class originals along with three of his grown kids and a daughter-in-law into a pair of rented RVs and hit the road for a month?
-
-
Hilarious!!!
- By TurtlesRMe on 03-06-07
By: Mike Leonard
-
The Cost of These Dreams
- Sports Stories and Other Serious Business
- By: Wright Thompson
- Narrated by: Wright Thompson
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There is only one Wright Thompson. He is, as they say, famous if you know who he is: his work includes the most-read articles in the history of ESPN (and it's not even close) and has been anthologized in the Best American Sports Writing series ten times, and he counts John Grisham and Richard Ford among his ardent admirers. But to say his pieces are about sports, while true as far as it goes, is like saying Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is a book about a cattle drive.
-
-
Just great
- By ACK on 06-02-19
By: Wright Thompson
-
One Shot at Forever
- A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season
- By: Chris Ballard
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1971, a small-town high school baseball team from rural Illinois playing with hand-me-down uniforms and peace signs on their hats defied convention and the odds. Led by an English teacher with no coaching experience, the Macon Ironmen emerged from a field of 370 teams to become the smallest school in Illinois history to make the state final, a distinction that still stands. There, sporting long hair, and warming up to "Jesus Christ Superstar", the Ironmen would play a dramatic game that would change their lives forever.
-
-
Outstanding.
- By Cartman18 on 08-02-13
By: Chris Ballard
-
Molina
- The Story of the Father Who Raised an Unlikely Baseball Dynasty
- By: Bengie Molina, Joan Ryan
- Narrated by: Henry Leyva
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A baseball rules book. A tape measure. A lottery ticket. These were in the pocket of Bengie Molina's father when he died of a heart attack on the rutted Little League field in his Puerto Rican barrio. The items serve as thematic guideposts in Molina's beautiful memoir about his father, who, through baseball, taught his three sons about loyalty, humility, courage, and the true meaning of success.
-
-
A book about life
- By P. Griswold on 06-11-15
By: Bengie Molina, and others
-
The Chicken Runs at Midnight
- A Daughter’s Message from Heaven That Changed a Father’s Heart and Won a World Series
- By: Tom Friend, Tim Kurkjian - foreword
- Narrated by: Ben Holland - foreword, Mark Schlicher
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Weaving baseball history with personal memoir, this book is one that will make you thrill to victory, believe in hope, stand up to cheer for what is good in peoples' lives. It's a powerful story of redemption and faith that reminds us that God can work in our lives even when we think it's too late to change - and sometimes he sends us signs from heaven if we only have eyes to see.
-
-
not really a sport's fan
- By virginia loranger on 09-24-20
By: Tom Friend, and others
-
The Boys of Summer
- The Classic Narrative of Growing Up Within Shouting Distance of Ebbets Field, Covering the Jackie Robinson Dodgers, and What's Happened to Everybody Since
- By: Roger Kahn
- Narrated by: Phil Gigante
- Length: 15 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is a story about young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and then went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the team that broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is a story by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. This is the story about what happened to the team when their glory days were behind them.
-
-
Classic book!
- By Christopher Arthur on 11-19-17
By: Roger Kahn
-
The Ride of Our Lives
- Roadside Lessons of an American Family
- By: Mike Leonard
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mike Leonard is a lucky man. It’s not everyone who gets parents like Jack and Marge. At 87, Jack is a pathological optimist with an inexhaustible gift of gab. Marge, Jack’s bride of 60 years, though cut from the same rough bolt of Irish immigrant cloth, is his polar opposite - pessimistic and proud of it. What was their son, Mike, thinking when he took a sabbatical from his job with NBC News so he could pile these two world-class originals along with three of his grown kids and a daughter-in-law into a pair of rented RVs and hit the road for a month?
-
-
Hilarious!!!
- By TurtlesRMe on 03-06-07
By: Mike Leonard
-
Shattered
- Struck Down, But Not Destroyed
- By: Frank Pastore, Ellen Vaughn
- Narrated by: Frank Pastore
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shattered is part sports audio book, because you’ll go on road trips, enter clubhouses, and walk on the fields of professional baseball. It’s part romantic novel, because you’ll journey with two young kids who fall in love and eventually elope, evading not only her family, but the law as well - for she was only 16. It’s also a story of brokenness, betrayal, and burn-out. If you were raised in a dysfunctional family, if you’ve ever had your dreams fall apart, been betrayed by close friends, or hit the psychological “wall” in your professional career, this is your audio book too.
-
-
Loved it
- By Jim Battle on 01-29-23
By: Frank Pastore, and others
-
Bottom of the 33rd
- Hope and Redemption in Baseball's Longest Game
- By: Dan Barry
- Narrated by: Dan Barry
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On April 18, 1981, a ball game sprang eternal. What began as a modestly attended minor-league game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings became not only the longest ever played in baseball history, but something else entirely. The first pitch was thrown after dusk on Holy Saturday, and for the next eight hours the night seemed to suspend its participants between their collective pasts and futures, between their collective sorrows and joys....
-
-
I love baseball
- By Sher from Provo on 04-08-13
By: Dan Barry
-
The Keeper
- A Life of Saving Goals and Achieving Them
- By: Ali Benjamin, Tim Howard
- Narrated by: J.D. Jackson
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer of 2014, Tim Howard became an overnight sensation after more than 10 years as one of America's leading professional soccer players. His record-breaking 15 saves for the United States national team against Belgium in the World Cup electrified a nation that had only recently woken up to the Beautiful Game after decades of hibernation. In this inspiring and candid memoir, the beloved US and Everton goalkeeper finally allows himself to do something that he would never do on the field: He drops his guard.
-
-
Tim Howard Saves more then Goals!
- By Ron on 12-16-14
By: Ali Benjamin, and others
-
Pete Rose
- An American Dilemma
- By: Kostya Kennedy
- Narrated by: Ben Bartolone
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pete Rose played baseball with a singular and headfirst abandon that endeared him to fans and peers, even as it riled others--a figure at once magnetic, beloved and polarizing. Rose has more base hits than anyone in history, yet he is not in the Hall of Fame. Twenty-five years ago he was banished from baseball for gambling, then ruled ineligible for Cooperstown; today, the question "Does Pete Rose belong in the Hall of Fame?" has evolved into perhaps the most provocative in sports, a layered, slippery and ever-relevant moral conundrum.
-
-
Good book, not so good production.
- By david d. on 05-01-14
By: Kostya Kennedy
-
The Keeper - Young Readers' Edition
- The Unguarded Story of Tim Howard
- By: Tim Howard
- Narrated by: William Harper
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this heartwarming and candid memoir, Tim Howard does something he would never do on a soccer field: he drops his guard. As fiercely protective about his privacy as he is guarding the goal for the US national team and for Everton in the English Premier League, Howard opens up for the first time about how a hyperactive kid from New Jersey with Tourette's syndrome defied the odds to become one of the world’s premier goalkeepers.
-
-
Don't judge a book by it's cover.
- By Anonymous User on 08-17-17
By: Tim Howard
-
Wherever I Wind Up
- My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball
- By: R. A. Dickey, Wayne Coffey
- Narrated by: Ben Hunter
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
> The Glass Castle meets Ball Four as Mets knuckleballer R. A. Dickey weaves searing honesty and baseball insight in this memoir about his unlikely journey to the big leagues. An English Lit major at the University of Tennessee, Dickey is as articulate and thoughtful as any professional athlete in any sport - and proves it page after page, as he provides fresh and honest insight into baseball and a career unlike any other.
-
-
Marred (for me) by unfortunate performance issues
- By Anthony on 03-28-13
By: R. A. Dickey, and others
-
POP
- By: Gordon Korman
- Narrated by: Nick Podehl
- Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Marcus moves to a new town, he doesn't have any friends. While practicing football for impending tryouts, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with former NFL star Charlie Popovich, nicknamed "The King of Pop". Charlie is a charismatic prankster, and the best football player Marcus has ever seen. But when his behavior starts getting more and more erratic, Marcus learns a secret: Charlie is suffering from early onset Alzheimer's from the concussions he sustained while playing professional football.
-
-
Missing chapter 15
- By Mimuna on 11-17-17
By: Gordon Korman
-
Fragile Beasts
- A Novel
- By: Tawni O'Dell
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer, Laural Merlington
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When their hard-drinking but loving father dies in a car accident, teenage brothers Kyle and Klint Hayes face a bleak prospect: leaving their Pennsylvania hometown for an uncertain life in Arizona with the mother who ran out on them years ago. But in a strange twist of fate, their town's matriarch, an eccentric, wealthy old woman whose family once owned the county coal mines, hears the boys' story and takes them in.
-
-
Tawni O'Dell Fan
- By bette on 09-20-10
By: Tawni O'Dell
-
Just a Guy
- Notes from a Blue Collar Life
- By: Bill Engvall, Alan Eisenstock
- Narrated by: Bill Engvall
- Length: 5 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Blue Collar Comedy star Bill Engvall is just a guy. He's been one his whole life. He can't help it; he was born that way. And that makes him an expert on the subject. For the record, here's the official definition of a guy: a person who doesn't think before he speaks. He can't. He's not that deep. Because a guy has only three basic needs: eating, sleeping, and sex. That's it. Just a Guy chronicles a lifetime in pursuit of those needs.
-
-
The Man Behind The Signs
- By Christopher on 12-07-07
By: Bill Engvall, and others
-
Pull Up a Chair
- The Vin Scully Story
- By: Curt Smith
- Narrated by: Don Leslie
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since 1950, the instantly recognizable voice of Vin Scully has invited listeners to “pull up a chair” for his peerless play-by-play sports reporting. Recruited and mentored by the legendary Red Barber, Scully has narrated NBC’s Game of the Week, twelve All-Star Games, eighteen no-hitters, and twenty-five World Series, describing players from Duke Snider to Orel Hershiser to Manny Ramirez, with hundreds in between.
-
-
Almost perfect
- By steve finkelstein on 02-06-21
By: Curt Smith
-
Netherland
- By: Joseph O'Neill
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alone and un-tethered, feeling lost in the country he had come to regard as home, Hans stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country. Ramkissoon, a Gatsby-like figure who is part idealist and part operator, introduces Hans to an "other" New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality.
-
-
Get Your Post-Colonial Gatsby ON!
- By Darwin8u on 04-13-12
By: Joseph O'Neill
-
The Great Nowitzki
- Basketball and the Meaning of Life
- By: Thomas Pletzinger, Shane Anderson - translator
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The seven-foot Dirk Nowitzki is one of the great players in basketball history. With a devastating fadeaway and unexpected agility, the Dallas Mavericks superstar helped to pioneer the modern three-shooting game and became a global ambassador for the sport. Award-winning novelist and sportswriter Thomas Pletzinger traveled with Nowitzki for more than seven years, seeking the secret of his success and longevity. In novelistic detail, Pletzinger tells the dramatic story of how a lanky kid from the German suburbs became a top-five all-time scorer and NBA champion.
-
-
👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
- By Anonymous User on 08-22-24
By: Thomas Pletzinger, and others
What listeners say about Cardboard Gods
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Matthew Milam
- 08-01-24
A life adventure told through baseball
An enjoyable listen to one family’s story with all of its ups and downs. The baseball is a nice reflection on the times when we were young and that’s all we talked about.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Scott J. Krason
- 10-27-20
Relatable, funny, and inspiring.
Although I started collecting baseball cards ten years later, and I grew up in NJ rooting for the Yankees, I really related to this book. It is a great story about baseball, family, and growing up. I highly recommend this book to anyone that collected baseball cards in the 70s and 80s and idolized the players on those cards.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jerry Conner
- 08-10-20
Baseball Card Fans Need Only Apply
Baseball Card fan relatable. pretty good listen. Got a little wayward from time to time but the cards as chapters always served well to re evaluate the direction. pretty good, I had each and every one of those cards.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Patrick S.
- 05-27-24
Not for a fan of baseball or baseball card collecting
If you want a book about a strangers childhood memories remotely tied to 70’s baseball cards, you may find it entertaining. If you’re looking for an informative book about baseball or baseball cards, look elsewhere.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!