A journey through the national pastime’s roots in America’s small towns and wide-open spaces: “An absorbing read.” —The Tampa Tribune In the film Field of Dreams, the lead character gives his struggling farming community a magical place where the smell of roasted peanuts gently wafts over the crowded grandstand on a warm summer evening, just as the star pitcher takes the mound. In The Farmers’ Game, David Vaught examines the history and character of baseball through a series of essay-vignettes—presenting the sport as essentially rural, reflecting the nature of farm and small-town life. Vaught does not deny or devalue the lively stickball games played in the streets of Brooklyn, but he sees the history of the game and the rural United States as related and mutually revealing. His subjects include nineteenth-century Cooperstown, the playing fields of Texas and Minnesota, the rural communities of California, the great farmer-pitcher Bob Feller, and the notorious Gaylord Perry. Although—contrary to legend—Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball in a cow pasture in upstate New York, many fans enjoy the game for its nostalgic qualities. Vaught’s deeply researched exploration of baseball’s rural roots helps explain its enduring popularity.

"In the fiscal year ended June 30, 1917 the foreign trade of the United States in raw and manufactured furs reached nearly, if not fully, the high level of years preceding the war. The imports were valued at $21,553,375, while the exports amounted to $15,729,160, a sum exceeded in only one previous year, 1913 when they were $28,389,586. Home manufacture and utilization of American furs has grown enormously since the beginning of the war. The large export trade of the past year shows, therefore, a production of pelts of unprecedented value, in spite of the fact that the actual number of skins collected must have been less than in previous years. Many former trappers were more profitably employed in other industries, and many were deterred from plying their vocation by the increased restrictions on trapping, especially the costly nonresident licenses. Trapping restrictions properly enforced and limiting the taking of fur to prescribed seasons will result not only in conserving the fur supply but in greatly increasing the quality and value of the annual catch." -- p.2

When George and Ann Rohrbacher began farming in the early seventies, they had no idea their up-and-down adventures on the land would be so harrowing. They weathered drought and flood, insect infestations, poor prices, and brutal bondage to their crops. Exhausted, at wit's end, they gambled every cent they owned that a parlor game invented by George would rescue them financially. And it did! The game that cleverly teaches the economics of keeping a farm afloat has sold hundreds of thousands of copies all over the world. Zen Ranching and The Farming Game is the touching, humorous, fascinating story of the farming couple who were saved by an idea that enabled them to turn misfortune into success. It's The Egg and I of the nineties.