Homestand Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America

<b>A poignant memoir exploring small town baseball as a lens into what’s right and wrong with modern America—written by an acclaimed journalist and Army Ranger who, after returning from Iraq to a painfully divided country, rediscovered its core values in the bleachers of a minor league ballpark in Batavia, New York.<br> <br>"Bardenwerper finds hope in the people and community around a former minor league baseball team.”<i>—Washington Post</i><br> <br>"Will reveal more about the prospects for America than 100 news stories about politics, and will be a lot more fun.”—James Fallows, bestselling co-author of <i>Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America</i></b><br><br>What happens when a minor league team—the heart and soul of a Rust Belt town in western New York—is shut down by the billionaires who run Major League Baseball?<br><br>Batavia, New York—between Rochester and Buffalo—hosted its first professional baseball game in 1897. Despite decades of deindustrialization and evaporating middle-class jobs, the Batavia Muckdogs endured. When Major League Baseball cravenly shut them down in 2020—along with forty-one other minor league teams—the town fought back, reviving the Muckdogs as a summer league team comprised of college players. As MLB considers further cuts and private equity buys up what remains, the mom-and-pop operations once prevalent in baseball are endangered. But for now, the sights and sounds of local baseball live on in Batavia—cheap draft beer and hot dogs, starry-eyed kids seeking autographs, and breathtaking summer sunsets.<br><br>With a vibrant, unforgettable cast of characters—from a librarian and her best friend whose relationship deepens with every “crepuscular hour” they spend together in the bleachers, to the former hockey brawler-turned team owner who greets regulars while working the concession stand, to the iconoclastic writer with a contagious love for his struggling hometown—Bardenwerper’s <i>Homestand</i> exposes the beating heart of small town America, friends and neighbors coming together as the crack of the bat echoes in the summer twilight.