When gregarious immersive journalist and Iraq War army veteran Will Bardenwerper read about Major League Baseball's "contraction of the minor leagues" that would eliminate 42 teams, he asked himself if this was "the set of values we, as a country, were fighting for." He calculated that the savings would equal "one major league minimum salary," and his outrage led to a quest: to explore one town's relationship to its team and determine what the U.S. "risked losing, and whether there was any chance it might be saved."
Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America chronicles the 2022 season of the Batavia, N.Y., Muckdogs; Bardenwerper (The Prisoner in His Palace) follows the team from their Memorial Day opener through the August playoffs. In a fast-paced narrative that alternates between snappy game coverage, heartwarming small-town traditions, and grim analysis of deindustrialization's impact on American communities, Bardenwerper introduces the Muckdogs, many of them college players who pay around $1,500 to work on their skills and play summer ball for their adoring fans, including the octogenarian couple with season tickets (and their great-grandsons) and a writer who knows visitors see his hometown as "a charmless Thruway stop on the Rust Belt's fringe." Unsparing in his disdain for baseball's "corporatized ownership," which he believes is destroying "the long-term health of the sport," Bardenwerper nevertheless finds joy in western New York, where he savors baseball in historic stadiums that still offer "a genuine slice of Americana." --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.