FARMINGTON — John Hodgkins, author of “Our Game was Baseball,” will have a book signing from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 11, at Devaney Doak & Garrett Booksellers.

His memoir chronicles the Temple, Maine, Townies, a team of freewheeling war veterans, loggers and teens of the 1940s and 1950s who brought life back to a sinking town.

In 1945, local pastor Richard Pierce wrote a dissertation toward a graduate degree in which he predicted the demise of Temple. “Temple as a cultural unit is undoubtedly reaching the end of its history,” he wrote.

The town answered with baseball.

The Townies played for 12 years following World War II throughout Franklin, Somerset, and Kennebec counties. Every small town fielded a team then, and some towns had two, three, or even four.

Folks in Temple, soldiers home from the war and townsfolk weary from years of deprivation and sacrifice brought on by the Depression and the war, turned to baseball as an invigorator.

In “Our Game was Baseball,” Hodgkins writes of how small-town ball infused Temple with inspiration, hope and enthusiasm.

Hodgkins, who grew up in Temple, was a longtime civil engineer for the Maine Department of Transportation and an engineering professor at the University of Maine. He is now retired and lives in Yarmouth.

Devaney Doak & Garrett Booksellers is at 193 Broadway.