Homestand Small town baseball and the fight for the soul of America

Army veteran-turned-journalist Bardenwerper (The Prisoner in His Palace, 2017) 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. Casual baseball fans may be unaware that the MLB organization cut ties with forty minor-league affiliates in 2020, but for the small towns affected by the changes, this was devastating to their economies and communities. In this immersive memoir, Bardenwerper spends a summer following the Batavia Muckdogs, a college summer-league team in western New York. For the residents of Batavia, baseball is less about wins and losses than about community, celebration, and playing the game. Filled with eccentric characters, some of whom have followed or worked with the Muckdogs organization for decades, this work captures a little piece of America's pastime in its best light. Bardenwerper also realizes how the "good vibes" of the Muckdog community acted as a "balm to his psyche".

At the end of 2020, Batavia, a small town in Western New York, was one of 42 towns in the United States to lose a minor league baseball team due to a contraction order from Major League Baseball itself. Some of the towns, including Batavia, were able to bring in collegiate-level teams to play there, but the talent level wasn't as high. Acclaimed journalist Bardenwerper (The Prisoner in His Palace: Saddam Hussein, His American Guards, and What History Leaves Unsaid) spent considerable time attending home games for the Batavia Muckdogs, so named because of the excessive amount of muck in the area. This book chronicles his experiences there and is a fascinating look at what professional baseball can mean to a community; the minor league contraction mirrors the effect modernization and technology has had on the United States, particularly in small towns. The book's tone is sentimental, especially when it delves into the lives of local characters, including fans, team owners, and players. VERDICT 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.--Steve Dixon

Fellowship forged in the bleachers survives corporate cost cutting. Five years ago, Major League Baseball dropped 40 of its 160 minor league teams, closing shop in communities across the country. To Bardenwerper, the author of the superb Iraq War bookThe Prisoner in His Palace, this seemed "emblematic of so much of what was wrong with today's America." Curious about how ex--minor league towns and cities were coping, he headed to western New York, home of the Batavia Muckdogs, a Miami Marlins affiliate until MLB's ruthless cutbacks. Under new local owners, the Muckdogs live on, though the pros have been replaced by college players who pay for their roster spots. Bardenwerper buys a $99 Muckdogs season ticket, befriends fans and ponders big questions "through the lens of baseball." In his telling, the contraction of the minor leagues is "a story about America, and where we go from here." Indeed, to learn that a private equity--backed minor league team owner helped MLB "orchestrate" the elimination of teams and subsequently bought more than 20 of the surviving teams is to be reminded that the forces of American corporate consolidation know neither shame nor mercy. While warning that the minors may yet sustain further indignities, Bardenwerper, chatting with fans and ballpark workers, demonstrates how baseball can be a lifeline in a community battered by deindustrialization. But like many before him, Bardenwerper can get schmaltzy about the sport. Playing catch is like "a sacrament." There's communal "magic" in the cheap seats. Thinking about a local who compares Batavia to heaven, Bardenwerper depicts his own "imagined afterlife" as aField of Dreams--esque ballgame. "Was I guilty of presenting a misleading Disney-like fantasy of the Batavia I wanted to discover" instead of the real thing? At times, yes. An earnest search for meaning in a community that lost a pro baseball team. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.