Waterloo Diamonds Book

Richard Panek spent nearly a year inside a peculiarly American enterprise in a peculiarly American setting - the minor league baseball franchise of a midwestern town. Through a powerful, lyrical, funny, and true account of the Diamonds' fight to survive in the struggling city of Waterloo, Iowa, this book explores the broad social and economic changes in America over the past decade and the past century. For one crucial - and, as it turned out, climactic - year in Waterloo's long history with baseball, Richard Panek lived along the Diamonds and their fans, traveling to games throughout the midwest, attending town meetings where the team's fate was passionately debated, talking with players and politicians, coaches and team owners. As the young Diamonds players struggled on the field - some hoping to rise to the big leagues, others seeing their dreams vanish forever - a larger struggle emerged in Waterloo: a battle for the city's future, fought on the fading playgrounds of its past.