Benchwarmer: An Anxious Dad's Almanac of Fatherhood and Other Failures

by Josh Wilker

For most of his life, Josh Wilker has been on the sidelines. Spending his days in a cubicle in the far reaches of Chicago, and his nights in front of Red Sox games, he has been content to let others take center stage. From childhood onward, he sought comfort from anxiety and depression in the archival pages of sports almanacs and stat a place where forgotten players lingered, and time seemed to stop--a welcome relief from worldly problems. He found joy in the trivia of long-lost athletes, like the former NFL player Walter "Sneeze" Achiu.
But when his first child was born in 2011, Wilker found his anxieties put to the how do you remain on the sidelines when a tender, fragile baby needs everything from you? How do you go from third-string forward on the winless 1988 Johnson State College Badgers to a strong, responsible father? Bit by bit, Wilker learns to overcome his demons, protect his son, and eventually take a few wobbly steps with him.
In homage to his favorite pastimes, Wilker has written Benchwarmer as just an A-to-Z reference on failing at sports. In entries from Asterisk to Barry Bonds to "the Yips" to Zero, Wilker mingles his own story among those of famous collapses, errors, and also-rans. A candid, bighearted, funny presence, Wilker writes about sports the way Michael Chabon writes about comics, or Rob Sheffield writes about as if the universe was contained in every blocked shot or dropped fly ball. In Wilker's hands, it is.

Genres: Sports

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 5, 2015

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Josh Wilker's memoir of fatherhood has some wonderfully poignant moments, but at times, cuts really close to the bone. Wilker has a very honest, confessional writing style. I think I enjoyed it more in his other book I've read, Cardboard Gods, where it felt a little more leavened with levity and hopefulness. Maybe it's because I identified all too well with his descriptions of the completely inept feeling of fathering a new baby. Anyway, this book has some wonderful moments, is full of candid and emotionally charged writing, but sometimes, it feels a little too emotionally charged. I'd read Cardboard Gods first (as I did), and if you liked that as much as I did, then Benchwarmers might resonate as well.

[Randall · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can't remember ever hating a book as much as I hated this one.

First, it's not much of a memoir. The content is a series of encyclopedic entries of otherwise unrelated sports items. The "fatherhood" is wedged into these entries almost always by brute force. Many entries have some sort of "so, the point is . . ." explanation, which to me is an admission that the author realizes he's struggling to make a point, or at least to make it understood.

Further, what is meant to represent fatherhood is often just painful admissions of self-doubt/loathing about what a general and specific failure the author realizes he is. And it's not painful because it has this ring of truth to it, either, as one of the jacket blubs seems to want to say. It's just painful because you can't believe anyone as neurotic as the author purports to be could possibly be aware enough of these neuroses to write about them so plainly and still be able to function much at all.

I admittedly was mostly skimming by the last 100 pages, excited to just be rid of the read, so I don't know for sure how it all panned out, but it seemed clear the child in question was not going to be older than one when the book got through with "Z". It makes sense that trying to align chronology with alphabetical order would lead to some awkward moments, but they're so numerous here that it's hard to see through to whatever idea was good enough to inspire the work that had to have gone into this product.

There's probably a better market for this book, but I'd bet than most people who know me would have been certain that when it comes to a "sports-obsessed memoir of fatherhood" with baseball caps on the cover, that I'm that perfect target.

And I would be, but this turns out to have been the entirely wrong book to carry that promise.

[Joe Loncarich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wilker's previous book, Cardboard Gods, may be my favorite book. Benchwarmer doesn't quite reach those lofty standards, but it's still good. Wilker does something most writers can't and is willing to tell stories that don't always paint him in the most positive light. So even when he makes poor choices, he still manages to be sympathetic due to that brutal honesty.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good but sad in parts.