Will Bardenwerper, a former Army infantry officer whose military service in the Iraq War included receiving a Bronze Star, became a nonfiction writer after returning to the U.S. — and following a stint working at the Pentagon.
Bardenwerper’s first book told the true story of a group of 12 American soldiers who guarded Saddam Hussein after his capture and while he was on trial. His second book goes in a completely different direction: sizing up the damage caused by Major League Baseball’s decision in 2019 to eliminate 42 minor league clubs as MLB affiliates, shrinking the minors by 25% to 120 teams.
The link with his previous book — and life? Bardenwerper, who had begun writing about small-town America for various publications, sees the loss of minor league baseball’s affordable, communal aspects as another example of the fraying of America. His time in the Army, particularly in combat, offered a strong sense of unity and community, traits he believes are scarcer and scarcer in the U.S.
That feeling, and connections forged through a story he wrote for Harper’s Magazine about the end of the Appalachian League, eventually pulled Bardenwerper to Batavia, N.Y., a town of 15,000 people who lost their Class A New York-Penn League team, the Muckdogs, in 2020 as part of MLB contraction. For that matter, the New York-Penn League itself ceased to exist.
In 2021, the Muckdogs were revived as part of a college summer league — and the fate of the western New York town and the shoestring operation that is the current Muckdogs organization and fandom are Bardenwerper’s focus.
He’s a bit of a baseball romantic. He collects eccentric friends in the stands, including one Muckdogs diehard who feeds her trivia studies by sampling the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, another who devours the novels of Thomas Hardy and an octogenarian regular who builds rosaries in the grandstands throughout the 2022 season chronicled in “Homestand.”
The author is no fan of MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, analytics-style baseball or the private equity-backed Diamond Baseball Holdings, which now owns more than one-third of the 120 MLB minor league affiliates.
Despite the Muckdogs’ popularity, Bardenwerper and some of the team’s fans lament what’s lost with the shrinking of MLB-affiliated teams and leagues. Watching lower-level college players is different than seeing pro prospects who could go on to play at Dodger Stadium or Wrigley Field, to cite one example.
Bardenwerper points to the roughly $700,000 saved by an MLB team when an affiliate is cut and sees billionaire owners hurting small towns for the equivalent of loose change lost in a sofa.
“To put it in context, that is about what certain major league stars will make in, like, three games,” Bardenwerper told SBJ. “It doesn’t seem like a particularly consequential amount of money in the larger scheme of things. Then you step back and you say, ‘OK, it saves them some money, but at what cost?’ I think what they would argue is that this is an antiquated system; we don’t need 160 teams with thousands of players and hundreds of managers and coaches spread all across the country to more accurately identify that very small handful that will go on to make the major leagues.”
That argument may or may not be valid, he added, but Bardenwerper believes there is more to minor league baseball than finding the next Bryce Harper. Instilling interest in the game beyond MLB markets for decades depended, in large part, on seeing professional players up close in small towns across the country.
“Homestand” tells the tale of a small-town season from every angle: the owners (husband-and-wife duo Robbie and Nellie Nichols), popcorn makers, fans, coaches, players, the public address announcer and a cranky contrarian or two.
Bardenwerper employs the Muckdogs’ season to good effect to examine American life in all its inequities and divisions while holding out a glimmer of hope that summer nights with affordable ballgames, among other things, can help us all be a bit more civil.
Erik Spanberg writes for the Charlotte Business Journal, an affiliated publication.
“Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America”
Author: Will Bardenwerper
Publisher: Doubleday, $30, 300 pages
The basics: Nonfiction account of the 2022 season of the Batavia (N.Y.) Muckdogs, a college summer team that replaced a New York-Penn League team after MLB contracted the minor leagues by 25%
Try it if you liked: “Field of Dreams”
Stay away if you liked: “Moneyball”
Sample passage: “[Team owner] Robbie [Nichols] invited the guests to pick up ‘goodie bags’ containing their tickets at a folding table to his left, manned by the summer’s crop of interns, eager college students who worked for free in exchange for what they hoped would be marketable experience at this, the lowest rung of sports management. Their enthusiastic smiles and palpable energy were evidence that they hadn’t yet endured the grueling summer schedule that led to Robbie’s admonition that ‘if you aren’t willing to put in eighteen-hour days, the business of sports isn’t for you.’”
