The Wild West had nothing on Montana’s first baseball games. Fights, booze, cheating and gambling fueled the state’s inaugural professional league in 1892. The turn of the century brought star-studded barnstorming tours and threats of bloodshed. Big Sky Country embraced a distinctly different version of the old ballgame, and Montana players who made their way to big league diamonds helped change the sport on and off the field. From the Lewis and Clark expedition to Dave McNally’s historic career, award-winning journalist Skylar Browning and researcher Jeremy Watterson reveal Montana’s relationship with America’s pastime.

Skylar Browning is the editor of the Missoula Independent, Montana’s only alternative news weekly. His award-winning feature writing has involved everything from spending time at the state’s only nudist colony to standing in the huddle with the local semi-pro football team. He’s been honored by the Montana Newspaper Association and the Society of Professional Journalists, and received an NEA Fellowship in 2009.

Jeremy Allan Watterson grew up on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation along the Hi-Line in Wolf Point. He has provided color for baseball games on KVCK radio. He is a member of the Society of American Baseball Research, and earned a degree in sociology from the University of Montana in Missoula. He has had photography, poetry and other co-authored baseball writing published in weekly newspapers and western Montana journals. Montana Baseball History is his first book.