Friday, May 9, 2025
Become a Patron!Who’s on the docket for the Friday matinee, looks like it’s Will Bardenwerper, author of The Prisoner in His Palace: Saddam Hussein, His American Guards, and What History Leaves Unsaid and most recently, Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America (Doubleday).
The story takes us to Batavia, New York in the western part of the state not too far from Buffalo. Batavia used to be home to the minor league Muckdogs but was wiped out during Major League Baseball’s consolidation of dozens of minor league teams, teams that were often the beating hearts of so many communities. What took that team’s place was a wood-bat college baseball summer league similar to the Cape Cod League, but not quite as awash in talent.
What separates Will’s book from many of these “a season with” books is that he focuses more on the people in the stands vs. the ones in the dugout, the often quirky people who love the game more for what it symbolizes: a meeting place and a chance to set aside our differences to agree on the bang bang bang of a 6-4-3 double play.
Will graduated from Princeton, served in the military after 9/11, is the author of two books, and has had work appear in The New York Times, Washington Post, Outside, The Denver Post and more. He enjoys a tough Crossfit workout — probably not eating an entire box of fucking chickpea pasta like I just did before I recorded this, fucking asshole, you know, I say I want to get in better shape, then I go ahead and do that? — playing ice hockey and rooting for the Mets, Capitals, and Steelers.
Lots of good stuff to chew on in this conversation including:
- How to bounce back from negative feedback
- How he navigated his reporting at the ballpark
- The state of Major League Baseball
- And self-doubt
