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**AD-TEAM** · Yesterday, 02:33 PM

[Image: 797cc6d36f4f38ff991112b07d6f7ad4.jpg]

Description:

Quote: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.

Category:Sports, History, Social Sciences, Baseball & Softball, United States History, Social Sciences - General & Miscellaneous, United States History - Northeastern & Middle Atlantic Region, Social Stratification & Social Classes, Northeastern & Middle Atlantic Region - History - General & Miscellaneous, Social Classes - General & Miscellaneous, Baseball - Essays & Writings, Baseball->Essays & Writings