"Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." So runs the familiar KJV passage from the Gospel of Matthew. Here in the grain belt, farmers struggle to make a living, but some folks still swear by God. Here, baseball continues, and no one supposes that consumers go without bread. The Grain Belt Association offers summer-night solace to small farmers and displaced laborers forced into service-sector jobs with small margins and smaller horizons. In places, like Sioux Falls, the league's towns embrace the new world information age. In others, like Monroe, the economic hope is that tourism will save the day and preserve the downtown from a strip mall homogeneity and Wal-Mart interchangeability. That is not likely.
It's flat here in this part of America's breadbasket, but everyone has to eat, and even for carnivores, that starts with plants. And someone has declared that after dinner there will also be baseball, where each night at the ballpark GBA fans get the chance to see something they have never seen before. The mixture of athleticism, ignorance, and nerve that characterizes level of play of the Grain Belt Association makes the usual, marvelous, or ludicrous play never far off.
CORN DIVISION |
WHEAT DIVISION |
SOYBEANS DIVISION |
Mason City Librarians | Ft. Dodge Evangelists | Decatur Tractors |
Monroe Leadheads | Mankato Lutherans | Macomb Barn Swallows |
Rochester Clinicians | Sioux City Sioux | Ottumwa Radar Gunners |
Waterloo Boys | Sioux Falls Spotted Cows |
Peoria Hog Farmers |