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

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.

"Bardenwerper finds hope in the people and community around a former minor league baseball team."--Washington Post

"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 Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America

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?

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.

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 Homestand exposes the beating heart of small town America, friends and neighbors coming together as the crack of the bat echoes in the summer twilight.

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