Homestand by Will Bardenwerper

 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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Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America: Bardenwerper, Will: 9780385549653: Amazon.com: Books

Will quit his job in finance following the 9/11 attacks in Manhattan and volunteered to serve in the United States Army. He spent most of the next decade engaged in United States foreign policy, beginning in 2004 as an infantry platoon leader. After completing his Army service, Will worked in the Washington Bureau of The New York Times before enrolling in The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, where he graduated with a Master's Degree in 2010. Upon graduation, he was selected to join the Pentagon as a Presidential Management Fellow, where he spent the next four years working on the development and implementation of defense strategy with senior leaders in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Will was an Airborne Ranger qualified infantry officer in the United States Army. He was stationed in Germany and his service included a 13-month deployment to Nineveh and Anbar Provinces, Iraq in 2006-7. While in Iraq, he helped lead his infantry battalion's reconstruction, civil affairs, and tribal engagement efforts in the city of Hit. His unit helped contribute to the beginning of what would later become known as the “Anbar Awakening.” Will was awarded a Bronze Star and a Combat Infantryman’s Badge.

Will is a graduate of Princeton University, where he majored in English. His book "The Prisoner in His Palace: Saddam Hussein, His American Guards, and What History Leaves Unsaid" was published by Scribner in 2017. He has had Op Eds and feature articles published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Harper's, Outside, Newsweek, and others. He contributes a regular opinion column to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

He new book "Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America" will be published by Doubleday on March 11, 2025 and is available for pre-sale.

In his free time, Will enjoys playing ice hockey, golf, skiing, and rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers, New York Mets, and Washington Capitals.

Will lives outside Pittsburgh with his wife, Marcy, their son, Bates, and daughter, Shea.