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Q&A: 'Wax Pack' author discovers life after baseball with a pack of 1986 Topps

Brad Balukjian was sitting in the upper deck at an Oakland A’s game a few years ago, when a mixture of adventure and nostalgia sent him down an unexpected path. He ordered a pack of 1986 Topps baseball cards — a childhood favorite of his and thousands of others at the time — off the internet and started to sketch out an idea that went beyond a trip down memory lane.

In the moment, Balukjian decided a pack of cards might be the best way to find out about life after baseball. He’d pick a pack, open it and track down every player. He’d visit them, tell their stories and, as it turns out, learn something about himself too. The finished product, aptly titled “The Wax Pack,” is a book that is part “where are they now?”, part memoir and part cardboard odyssey five years in the making. It’s available starting Wednesday.

Balukjian, a scientist by trade who teaches biology at Merrit College in Oakland, got in his Honda Accord in the summer of 2015 and set out an adventure that covered 11,341 miles, 48 days and 30 states. The list of players in that fateful pack of 1986 Topps ranged from Hall of Famers like Steve Carlton and Carlton Fisk to ’80s stars like Doc Gooden and Vince Coleman, all the way down to the likes of Don Carman and Rance Mulliniks.

Yahoo Sports talked to Balukjian about his journey, the book, his favorite baseball cards and what he learned about baseball’s afterlife.

"The Wax Pack" tells the story of one man's quest to track down all the players in a pack of 1986 Topps. (Brad Balukjian / @waxpackbook)
"The Wax Pack" tells the story of one man's quest to track down all the players in a pack of 1986 Topps. (Brad Balukjian / @waxpackbook)

Question: The idea behind this book seems like every baseball's childhood dream. How did it come to you? Was the trip as fun as it sounds?

Answer: Yes, the trip was every bit as fun as it sounds, but also was a lot of work full of moments of loneliness and self-doubt. I tried to be extremely open and honest about what I was feeling as I went on the journey. In terms of the origin story, my favorite players as a kid were always the underdogs, the common cards. I long wondered what happened to the guys from my childhood, and dreamed of doing a "where are they now?" style adventure. I realized that the wax pack provided the perfect device for getting to write about many of those guys, while at the same time evoking the thrill of the unknown we all experienced when opening a pack as a kid.

You tracked down players from one pack of 1986 Topps. Did you go with the first pack you opened? Were there plans for a back-up pack if you didn't like the first one?

I did not go with the first pack, knowing that if I opened it and got several dead players or if everyone lived in Indiana it would not make for a very entertaining road trip book. So I opened several packs and went with the one that had (almost all) living players and guys spread out throughout the country.

You say in the book you're a fan of the underdogs rather than the huge stars. Which underdog player were you most happy to see show up in your pack of cards?

Definitely Don Carman. He was my favorite player as a kid (I wrote him a birthday card and made a plaque out of his baseball card), and so he was far and away the player I was most excited about meeting. I had no idea why he was my favorite player (other than playing for my favorite team, the Phillies), but after the trip and seeing all the parallels I have with him, I was starting to think maybe it was just meant to be (which as a scientist not prone to such proclamations of fate, I don't say lightly).

Was there a favorite player you were really hoping would be in the pack but wasn't?

Not really. There were plenty of other underdog guys I would have liked to track down (Marty Barrett, Spike Owen) but to me, the appeal and elegance of using the pack as a narrative device was the random nature of its contents.

Which player in your pack was the most elusive or toughest to track down?

I would have to go Vince Coleman, with runner-up to Carlton Fisk. Vincent Van Go refused to give me an audience, so for his chapter, I went back to his childhood home in Jacksonville and also found his childhood church and high school.

Was 1986 Topps actually your favorite year of cards as a kid?

No, but it was the first year I remember collecting (I turned 6 that year). I actually liked the designs of some of the older sets more ('80, '83) but I don't remember those years in real time.

What is your favorite card that you own from your childhood?

For some reason, the 1987 Topps Sammy Khalifa sticks with me — the mix of color, the odd one-knee-up stance, those Pirates uniforms. Seared into my memory.

Life after baseball is such a great topic, especially for people who played before the Internet and social media. From all the stories you told, did you come away with a universal truth about life after baseball?

I describe baseball players as accidental Buddhists, in that without even realizing it, they can teach us an awful lot about how to live our lives. The only way to survive in a game so full of failure is to live in the present moment, to immediately let go of the past and to not get preoccupied with the future. They applied that approach to deal with adversity on the field and off it, as they grappled with many of the same issues that the rest of us do (divorce, disease, addiction, etc).

You're also on a bit of a personal journey during the book, making your self and your personal exploration part of the story. What did you learn about yourself while on your baseball card journey?

I learned that we all have a lot more in common with ballplayers than we realize. We tend to fetishize athletes as these gods, but they are really just people like you and me who had this one (very fleeting) talent. When you go to the ballpark and someone boos a player for an error, the player acts like they don't hear it, but they do. They internalize. It hurts them. The way the Wax Packers opened up to me, willing to be vulnerable, demystified some of that hero worship for me in a very healthy way. I feel closer to them as a result, not for the players they were, but the people they are.

What happened to the cards from the Pack now that you're done with the book?

Haha, someone asked me this recently and I'm ashamed to admit they were buried at the bottom of a box in storage. I excavated them and am considering making some kind of display out of it.

“The Wax Pack” is available now from the University of Nebraska Press. Find more info on WaxPackBook.com or Amazon.

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