“Poignant and powerful. . . . Balukjian covers more than ten thousand miles to track down the stories of fourteen men from a single pack of 1986 Topps baseball cards, learning a lot about their lives—and his own. Hop in the backseat and join him for the journey.”

—Tyler Kepner, national baseball writer for the New York Times and best-selling author of K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches

“As pleasing as the pink slab of bubble gum that, long ago, came with baseball cards inside five cent packets, this slender volume gives fresh flavor to the familiar phrase ‘inside baseball.’”

—George F. Will

“What if a pack of baseball cards could come to life? It sounds like a Spielberg movie plot, except it happened. It happened because Brad Balukjian made it happen, in real life, with the most eclectic cast of baseball characters ever assembled. And the result is one of the most fun, honest, funny, human, and uniquely creative baseball books of the year. I’ll admit it. I loved The Wax Pack!”

—Jayson Stark, senior baseball writer for The Athletic

“What a weird, quirky, fun read. There have been 50,000 books written on Major League Baseball, but Brad Balukjian’s The Wax Pack is a uniquely romantic love letter to a game, a time period, and its random soldiers. Well done.”

—Jeff Pearlman, author of Football for a Buck

“Balukjian’s cross-country, cardboard-based bildungsroman reminds us that baseball’s best stories are sometimes told by and about players who’ve long since left the league.”

—Ben Lindbergh, best-selling author of The MVP Machine and The Only Rule Is It Has to Work

“Brad Balukjian’s book is for all those little kids with cardboard heroes who turned into big kids and started wondering, ‘Hey, what if there’s more to life than just the cardboard?’ Turns out, there is.”

—Rob Neyer, author of Power Ball: Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game