In 2021, Major League Baseball eliminated its connection with forty-two minor league teams across America, including Batavia, a small town in New York State hard hit by deindustrialization.
Robbie and Nellie Nichols purchased the Batavia Muckdogs, formerly affiliated with the Miami Marlins, and enrolled the team in the Perfect Game Collegiate Baseball League. (To preserve their eligibility to return to their college teams, players in the PGCBL are not paid.)
Sensing that Batavia might help him understand whether small-town baseball would or should endure, along with its host communities, Will Bardenwerper, a journalist and Iraq war veteran, paid $99 for a season ticket and spent the summer of 2022 driving back and forth from his home in suburban Pittsburgh to watch the Muckdogs play.
In “Homestand,” Bardenwerper, who describes himself as “predisposed to a nostalgia that could sometimes verge on melancholy,” provides an informative, often emotional account of small-town baseball and “the special group of people” on the field, behind the scenes, and in the stands “who help keep it alive one summer at a time.”
The villain in Bardenwerper’s estimation — in small towns and professional baseball — is corporate greed. The unionization of minor league players in 2022, which drove up minimum salaries, he indicates, put more small-town clubs on Major League Baseball’s chopping block. Getting rid of an entire minor league team, he notes, saves billionaire MLB owners only one minimum major leaguer’s salary.
Bardenwerper does give a shout-out to Michael Gartner, owner of the Iowa Cubs (and former editor of the Des Moines Register), who gave his full-time employees a check for $2,000 for every year they worked for the team when he sold it to Diamond Baseball Holdings, which now owns 30% of all minor league clubs.
That said, “Homestand” is an homage to an ideal Bardenwerper insists he experienced as a reality in Dwyer Stadium: the reinvention of “informal neighborhood socializing,” the forging of friendships and a stronger sense of community.
After each game, Robbie Nichols stationed himself at the front gate to wish fans a good night as they exited the ballpark. Robbie and Nellie made the “Challenger” game for Batavia youngsters with mental and physical disabilities a highlight of the summer season. And the players enjoyed screwing up to make sure the outcome remained in doubt.
They agreed as well to sign autographs before all home games, not least because fans, especially younger kids who didn’t know the difference between a Muckdog and a Major League All-Star, treated them like celebrities.
For Bardenwerper, the most important action occurred in the stands. Over the course of a season, he reveals, conversations with season ticket holders became increasingly intimate, with time between games to digest, reflect on and respond to what had previously been said.
The “regulars” with whom he bonded may make readers of “Homestand” contemplate moving to Batavia.
A very short list of individuals “who sparked chains of positivity” includes Betsey Higgins, a librarian, who cherishes the twilight at Dwyer, when the lights go on “during the crepuscular hour and you forget everything, see the pink clouds, and it’s almost like a religious experience.”
Ernie Lawrence, a folk musician and special education teacher, volunteers at hospice, makes rosaries for friends and acquaintances, and hopes that dialysis to treat his failing kidneys can be postponed until autumn so he can enjoy the remainder of the baseball season.
Joe Kauffman, a former Muckdogs batboy, at age 87, enjoys watching a few innings in the company of friends, before he and his wife return to their home, which is a few blocks away.
Eric Zweig, another Dwyer Stadium regular, it’s worth noting, warned Bardenwerper — and rightly so — “not to become a Batavia cheerleader and go on waxing nostalgic about everything.”
But who can blame Bardenwerper for searching for a place where, albeit temporarily, he could “transcend toxic tribal loyalties that our society seemed so intent on imposing.”
Glenn C. Altschuler is The Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.
First Published: March 24, 2025, 8:00 a.m.
