"Homestand" by Will Bardenwerper
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?
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.
Praise
“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
