From 
Doug Moe: Peterson’s Farm Tavern is king
Doug Moe
August 21, 2007
[Madison, Wisconsin] – ROD PETERSON says this was going to be the year. He isn’t getting any younger, you know.
Peterson is about to put 70 in his rear view mirror and assembling this year’s edition of his Farm Tavern softball team took a lot out of him. He sent all the way to Australia for one kid, Jeff Goolagong, who turns out to be related to Evonne Goolagong Cawley, the tennis star from the 1970s.
The point is, Peterson, a Rio native who came to Madison in 1955, was at last going to put a wrap on a fast-pitch softball managing career that is legendary around the world among those in the know. Then a funny thing happened. Saturday night, in Canada, Peterson’s Farm Tavern won another International Softball Congress (ISC) world title.
“Now” Peterson was saying Monday,” “we’ll be back to defend.”
Among fast-pitch softball players, guys who generally play for love and beer money, the Farm Tavern franchise resonates like the New York Yankees. Last weekend’s world title was the Farm’s third, and there have been multiple national crowns as well. The numbers can run together for a self-described farm boy like Peterson, but they appear to indicate the Farm Tavern has finished in the top four in the world championships 11 of the past 12 years. Talk about a Murders’ Row.
This all started for Peterson, 69, one day in the early 1960s when he was leaving his job at the Mendota State Hospital on the north side and spotted a buddy carrying baseball spikes. The friend said he was going to a fast-pitch softball game. “Want to come?”
Peterson, a lifelong baseball fan who had been thinking about playing Home Talent League hardball, went along, and he has never looked back. He played first base and started managing in 1966, skippering a team sponsored by the Music Box Tavern on Madison ‘s east side in the city recreation league.
Peterson, whose family has a 650-acre farm south of Rio, bought the Farm Tavern on Moorland Road, south of South Towne, in 1975, and naturally he fielded a fast-pitch softball team. Today they play some 55 games a summer, traveling around the state and beyond. Fast-pitch has become an international game. This year’s Farm team has four players from Wisconsin (out of 15 on the roster). Peterson pays room, board and a stipend to the mostly young players who relocate here for the summer. And while the game is bigger elsewhere than in Madison, every July Peterson hosts a tournament at the Bowling Green complex in Middleton.
There have been many highlights over the years. In the ISC world tournament in 1981, held in Saginaw, Mich., the Farm Tavern played a 34-inning game that took nearly six and one half hours to complete. The Valley Merchants of Midland, Mich. wound up winning it 2-1 in the bottom of the 34th. The Michigan pitcher recorded 64 strikeouts.
The result was better in 1997 when the Farm won its first ISC title in Victoria, British Columbia. Peterson calls it “the greatest thrill I ever had in my life.”
How did they celebrate?
“We drank champagne out of the cup and danced at a club until four in the morning.” The manager chuckled. “It was quite an ordeal.”
They won again in 1999, and last week they were up in Canada again, in Kitchener this time, seeded sixth out of the tournament field of 32. It hadn’t been the greatest season for the Farm, but Peterson says that about a month ago things started to come together, and in the tournament they thumped a couple of “really great” teams that had beaten them earlier. The final was an 8-1 rout of a team from Palm Springs, Calif.
“I’m coming to the end,” Peterson said Monday. “I’m getting older and every year the kids seem younger. It’s a tremendous amount of work” But next year’s world tournament is nearby — in Kimberly. You can bet both the farm boy and the Farm Tavern will be there.
