Homestand - by Will Bardenwerper (Hardcover)

About the Book

"A poignant memoir exploring small town baseball as a lens into what's right and wrong with modern America - written by an acclaimed journalist who went from Princeton to Army Ranger School to Iraq in search of the core values he ended up finding in a minor league stadium in Batavia, New York"--

Book Synopsis

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.

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.

Review Quotes

"A romantic look at the magic of small-town baseball.... In Homestand, journalist Will Bardenwerper finds hope in the people and community around a former minor league baseball team."
--Washington Post

"An informative, often emotional account of small-town baseball and 'the special group of people' on the field, behind the scenes, and in the stands 'who help keep it alive one summer at a time.'"
--Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Will Bardenwerper's Homestand isn't just a great baseball story, but a sensitive and searching look at the ways Americans have built up community, as well as the forces that tear it down. In one small town, he finds a potent symbol for the state of American civic life, and a guide to how we might protect it."
--Phil Klay, award-winning author of Redeployment and Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War

"This is a lovely, original, and very timely book. In telling the story of one small town and its beloved Muckdogs baseball team, Will Bardenwerper seamlessly tells the story of American setbacks, and possibilities, in our times. Homestand 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

"This much needed book both celebrates the significant social role played by minor league baseball to small town America for over a century, but more critically eviscerates Major League Baseball's greedy dismantling of this unique institution. Owners pay hundreds of millions of dollars to their stars, but refuse to pay a pittance to the teams that serve as a development ground for those players."
--Ron Shelton, director of Bull Durham and author of The Church of Baseball

"Minor league baseball remains the purest expression of what some of us still consider the national pastime. In Homestand, Will Bardenwerper tells the moving story of the rise and fall and tentative resurrection of this unique American institution through the lens of one season in one small town. Even readers who don't know a batboy from a cut-off man will find themselves rooting for the Muckdogs--and loving this book."
--Christopher Beha, author of The Index of Self-Destructive Acts

"At a time when so many economic and social forces have been undermining America's small cities, from e-commerce to media consolidation, the institution of minor-league baseball remained as a crucial pillar of local identity. Homestand is a deeply reported depiction of what MLB's elimination of dozens of minor league teams will mean for communities across the country. This is an affecting glimpse into a corner of overlooked America."
--Alec MacGillis, author of Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America

"For anyone who's ever walked into a baseball stadium and felt the greatest meaning lies in the smallest of moments, Will Bardenwerper masterfully articulates why. Homestand is an excavation of the remnants of small-town America, an absorbing shotgun journey alongside the regular people coping with yet another cruel downsizing."
--Evan Drellich, senior writer for The Athletic and author of Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess

"What Major League Baseball didn't know, or care about, is that it didn't cut its minor-league game from just the ballparks, but also the coffee shops, the water coolers, the beer joints, the Fourth of July parades, the state fairs, the childhoods and the sunsets. What a shame. In the wonderful and lyrical Homestand, Will Bardenwerper invites us to fill our hearts (and plastic cups), to stand beside our neighbors, to root for the home team and to remember why it mattered, one more time."
--Tim Brown, New York Times bestselling author of Imperfect with Jim Abbott and The Tao of the Backup Catcher with Erik Kratz

"More than a book about baseball, Homestand acts as a celebration of local community and a protest against the corporate and technological take over now threatening every corner of American life. Featuring a wonderful cast of idiosyncratic characters like Popcorn Bob and the Onion Queen of Elba, New York, Bardenwerper fuses the unflinching, clear-eyed prose of an investigative journalist with the old-fashioned whiskey-soaked poetry of classic sportswriting. We see the games, we taste the beer, we feel the chill of night creep up our collar as the sun goes down, and hold our breath when the batter steps to the plate, sets his feet, eyes the pitcher and dreams of greatness."
--Michael Patrick F. Smith, author of The Good Hand: A Memoir of Work, Brotherhood, and Transformation in an American Boomtown

"This is not really a book about baseball, though baseball fans will enjoy it. Rather, it is a well-written paean to a sense of community that is now sadly in danger of being lost in America. Read Homestand, and savor it while you still can."
--Robert D. Putnam, Professor Emeritus, Harvard Kennedy School and author of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

"Bardenwerper is on a quest to see if the country he defended--while serving in the US Army during the Iraq War--still exists out there, past the corporate takeovers and political division. The result is a book that is part business expose, part love letter to small town, and as a native son of Western New York, I can tell you he nails his portrait of the place. Homestand is an Our Town for minor league baseball."
--Brian Castner, author of The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows

"A deep and emphatic look at communities, and a very American game, trying to cope with and overcome powerful external forces that only see profits and have forgotten the transcendent in life, and in baseball."
--Chris Arnade, author of Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America

"Homestand is an intimate, deeply reported portrait of a town bonded for a century by the love of baseball. It's also a welcome reminder that, at a time when our communities are pulled apart by politics and culture--and diminished by the soul-sucking, business-first ethos of the distant major leagues--it's still possible to unite around something as simple as watching a bunch of college kids on a team called the Muckdogs play on a warm summer night."
--Stefan Fatsis, author of Wild and Outside: How a Renegade Minor League Revived the Spirit of Baseball in America's Heartland and A Few Seconds of Panic: A Sportswriter Plays in the NFL

"Homestand, a title with deeper meaning than at first glance, is a wonderful exploration of far more than baseball in a small town. It's a story about values, community, and the troubling American landscape we've created that has sacrificed both for the sake of cash."
--Brian Alexander, author of Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town and The Hospital: Life, Death, and Dollars in a Small American Town

"This book (Homestand) is like a love story of baseball and a love story of America, and also about how money and greed can corrupt both of those things, but finally how the soul of America is still there."
--Jocko Willink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALS Lead and Win

"Any reader with a heart for baseball is apt to start crying on Page 1, and to cry again on the last page, with plenty of misty eyes in between.... Homestand is a beautiful work of melancholy, because it's a heartfelt effort to hold onto beauty in a world of loss."
--Washington Free-Beacon

"Combining social commentary with heartfelt storytelling, [Bardenwerper] captures eccentric fans, passionate locals, and the bittersweet clash between corporate greed and grassroots love for the game. Both baseball fans and general readers will find this a poignant portrait of small-town America."
--Arlington Magazine

"An empathetic writer who understands the stakes of what's happening in Batavia and what it portends for the rest of the country, Bardenwerper is the perfect chronicler of this shrinking slice of Americana."
--Air Mail

"Baseball lovers will be enamored with the storytelling and conclusions, but one doesn't have to be an enthusiastic sports fan to gain insight into the human soul from Bardenwerper's book. Consider this resource a must-purchase."
--Library Journal (starred)

"Bardenwerper presents a scathing indictment of the corporatization of Major League Baseball (MLB) while simultaneously immersing readers in the remarkable resilience and joy of small-town baseball in Batavia, New York.... Filled with eccentric characters.... Bardenwerper captures a little piece of America's pastime in its best light."
--Booklist

About the Author

WILL BARDENWERPER has contributed to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Harper's and other outlets and is the author of The Prisoner in His Palace: Saddam Hussein, His American Guards, and What History Leaves Unsaid. He served as an Airborne Ranger-qualified infantry officer in Iraq and was awarded a Combat Infantryman Badge and Bronze Star. Before working in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, he received a B.A. from Princeton and M.A. from Johns Hopkins University.