The “Wild Farmers” once started with a few farmer’s sons on a field with simple equipment, today they play in the Bundesliga and currently for the German championship Photo: Wild Farmers Dohren First division club from Dohren swears by down-to-earthness and a sense of community
L P D – Agriculture and sport – these are often two things that, above all in the past, but still today, are mutually exclusive. On the one hand, due to the amount of work to be done on the farm, there is no time for a sporting hobby, secondly, farm work in itself involves a lot of physical activity, and thirdly, it has happened and still happens today that parents forbid their children from dangerous sports because the important worker for the farm must not be absent, especially during the harvest season. But in the Lower Saxony village of Dohren with 1,300 souls – just outside Hamburg – a special sport has been loved and lived for more than 30 years: baseball. The “Wild Farmers” once started with a few farmer’s sons on a field with simple equipment, today they play in the Bundesliga and currently for the German championship, reports the Landvolk press service.
“When you drove up to training or even to a game in a tractor, many an opposing team from the big cities of Berlin or Hamburg were amazed and their eyes widened,” remembers Henrik Dallmann, until recently a dairy farmer with 120 cows with a milking robot and direct marketing, now a part-time farmer with 60 cows, and still an active baseball player with the Wild Farmers. “But now in the third division team,” adds the 42-year-old with a smile. At the end of the 1980s, the rural youth came back to Dohren enthusiastically from their trip to the Hamburg cinema to see the film “Indianer von Cleaveland”, in which a bunch of sporting losers work together to form a successful baseball team, and everyone agreed: “Yeah, We do that too!” The name had to sound English, the sons of farmers are part of it, everyone comes from the countryside and the car registration number WL stands for “Wild Farmers” – a “crazy idea” became the “Wild Farmers”.
No sooner said than done: A farmer made a fallow area available. “With grandfather’s cultivator and front loader, we made it playable with combined forces for our first purposes,” says Dallmann, describing the initial actions for implementing the American ball game in the village. Shirt-sleeved and free of charge – as is customary with farmers and in the country – they got down to business according to the rural youth motto “just do it”. “That is what defines us to this day. We don’t have the opportunities that the big clubs have, that strengthens cohesion,” says Dallmann, who also sees the sporting success of the Wild Farmers, founded in 1990, as anchored. He loved the sport and his father supported him and gave him time off from the yard and stables on the weekends while he was playing baseball.
Word quickly got around: Dohren has baseball instead of football. The little ones emulated the grown-ups – sticks served as bats, potatoes in the field as balls, children playing ball became baseball players. Rural youth used to drive to Hamburg on mopeds to get balls, clubs and gloves. Gradually, the equipment, team and logistics became more professional – the whole village helped and still supports many tasks on a voluntary basis. In 2010, they were promoted to the first Bundesliga. It is above all the Brunkhorst, Dallmann and Hassenpflug families who have lived this “spirit” from the very beginning and have gathered many helpers around them. None of the former two founding farmer sons plays anymore; Dallmann is one of the last of the wild farmers with agricultural roots.
The team of the 1st men in the Bundesliga now consists of players from Dohren and the region as well as some professionals. “But we are surrounded by farmers and are happy if we, as a small village, can annoy the baseball clubs from the big cities,” confirms founding member Bernd Sievers, who also once actively promoted the Wild Farmers as a pitcher, and now as division manager, Coaches and players of the 3rd gentlemen supported the wild farmers.
Dohren is currently upside down: For the first time, the 1st men’s team succeeded in beating the multiple German champion Heidenheim in the play-offs in the first and second of four games. Perhaps the wild farmers from Dohren will one day become German champions – there is certainly no lack of support from the village and the surrounding rural area. (LPD 59/2023)
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2023-08-07 08:00:30
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