Lessons in Life I Learned from My Baseball Cards

by Patrick J. Caraher

Remember when the most exciting moment of your childhood was opening a fresh pack of baseball cards? How you gazed lovingly at the pictures of your heroes, pored over their statistics, thrilled to their exploits and identified with their lives? We all know someone whose baseball card collection was the most significant touchstone of his childhood. Baseball card collector Patrick Caraher has turned his lifelong passion into a spiritual odyssey in Lessons in Life I Learned from Baseball Cards. Selecting some prize items from his collection, Caraher has reflected on their larger resonance and produced this little gem of a book, the sports equivalent of Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. With deft cameos of stars whose admirable lives and careers characterized such virtues as fortitude, humility, determination, honesty, and decency, Caraher has breathed life into the statistics behind baseball's role models and produced a collection of miniature portraits that illuminates the national pastime as few other books have. 

105 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Gary Anderson]

Author Patrick J. Caraher describes how the statistics on the backs of baseball cards helped him discover and articulate life lessons about perseverance, humility, fairness, and more as gleaned from the careers of Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Pete Rose, and several others, including Michael Jordan and Frank Thomas.

[Babs M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed it. My only complaint is the section on Frank Robinson that is was not mentioned that he was the first black major league baseball manager.