Emotional Ties to Baseball

Journalist Will Bardenwerper joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new book, Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America, which explores the consequences of Major League Baseball cutting 40 affiliated minor league teams, each one only as expensive as an average Major League salary. He explains how the accessibility and affordability of minor league baseball has made it a unique gathering point for working-class communities like the one in Batavia, New York, where Bardenwerper followed the local team, the Muckdogs, for a season. He celebrates the traditions and resilience of the Muckdogs fans and owners, who revived the team after it was eliminated as a minor league franchise. He also reads from Homestand. 

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, and Moss Terrell.

Will Bardenwerper

• Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America

• “Minor Threat: MLB puts the farm system out to pasture” by Will Bardenwerper |Harper’s Magazine

• The Prisoner In His Palace: Saddam Hussein, His American Guards, and What History Leaves Unsaid

Others:

• Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 3, Episode 4: Wild Ecologies: So Go the Salmon, So Goes the World: Tucker Malarkey, Will Bardenwerper, and Stan Brewer In Conversation

• Moneyball by Michael Lewis

• Field of Dreams (1989)

  
  Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella

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