This Friday’s episode of Math and Musings will feature O’Connell family exploits north of the border to Niagara Falls and vicinity.

But Niagara Falls was actually a sidequest to the real mission about 50 miles east: Batavia, New York, home of the Batavia Muckdogs.

Muckdogs, yes, glad you asked.

Last year I read a book called Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America. (When “fight” and “soul” and “America” are in the title you know it’s got to be an important book.) I’d heard the author, Will Bardenwerper, on Doug Hill’s podcast, Conversations with Sports Fans, had to get the book, and then had to see the protagonists, jointly the Muckdogs players and the townspeople of Batavia. Bardenwerper uses Batavia as a sort of stand-in for all rust belt cities, not unlike the one I grew up in, and the parallels between Batavia and Binghamton are striking. Run down and past its prime, for sure, but still with a certain spark and certain charm. When Batavia lost its minor league baseball club in 2020, the aforementioned townspeople rose up and brought a certain dignity back to old Dwyer stadium with the new Muckdogs, members of the Perfect Game Collegiate Baseball League. Perfect Game is the Cape Cod of Western New York, and the husband-and-wife team that runs the club in Batavia, Robbie and Nellie Nichols, are the true heroes of Bardenwerper’s story.

But there are so many more characters profiled than the Nicholses.

One of them I got to see on the field at the game I attended. Not a player or coach or owner but superfan (among other things) Dr. Ross Fanara. Dr. Fanara is 85 years old and has been cheering on the Muckdogs for decades. And I know his age because it was announced at the game… as we celebrated his birthday. Doc’s great-grandchildren (who also get mentions in the book) were there throwing out ceremonial first pitches to great fanfare, as everyone in the crowd knew who they were, and that Doc and his wife are raising them… in their eighties!

It was one charming moment of many at the park that night, one in which I saw not only small-town charm, small-town soul, and a certain amount of small-town fight, but a win as well!

Seeing it with my wife and son?

Even better.

Niagara Falls was okay too.