It Happens Every Spring: Baseball and Duluth Dylan Fest 2026

Yesterday morning a pair of low-flying bald eagles flew across my front yard just above the treetops. Earlier this week I saw hawk-watchers on Thompson Hill counting raptors migrating to their northern habitats. These are standard signs of spring here in the Northland. And then there's baseball.

Artwork by Misisipi Mike

Major League Baseball has opened this week. When I was a kid my family would watch It Happens Every Spring around this time of year. The film opens with college professor Ray Milland working on a chemistry project as some kids playing baseball outside hit a ball through the window, smashing his beakers and test tubes. The various chemicals cause something unusual to happen. The stained baseball is repelled by wood. As a result, you can't hit it with a bat. His "discovery" fuels his dream of being a major league pitcher and he takes a sabbatical to help his beloved St. Louis Cardinals reach the World Series.

Bob Dylan was about eight years old when this movie came out, and I have no doubt he saw it. If not at the theater, then I'm sure he saw it on TV because every year it was no doubt broadcast in Hibbing as it was in Cleveland when I was a boy.

Once you start to notice, you will see a lot of connections between Dylan and baseball. Did you know Roger Maris was born in Hibbing? Maris achieved controversial fame by breaking Babe Ruth's  home run record the same year Dylan moved to New York City.  The Maris controversy was due to the fact that 1961 was the year MLB lengthened its season from 154 to 162 games. This seemed unfair to some diehard fans and sportswriters. Of course, Dylan himself would go on to create his share of controversies.

This year's Duluth Dylan Fest emblem features a cartoonish Bob Dylan in a baseball uniform with the #85 on his back, representing his 85th birthday which we will be celebrating for a week here in Duluth later this spring. The Dylan-Baseball connections are many, hence this year's "logo."

A lot of folks are unaware that Abe Zimmerman played semi-pro baseball here in the Northland. Abe once shared how he travelled from Duluth to Hibbing around 1929 or 1930 to "play ball," where he and his teammates earned about $2 each for the day. In 1941, the same year Robert Zimmerman was born, Duluth built a minor league ballpark called Wade Stadium, which may have been part the inspiration for Dylan's minor league ballpark tours in 2004 and 2009 with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp. The day after Dylan performed here in Duluth's Bayfront Park in 2013, he and his bandmates performed at the St Paul Saints Midway Stadium ball park. Bobby Vee was there and Dylan sang Vee's "Suzie Baby" as a tribute.

Illustration by the author.

Longtime Dylan fans are well aware of his Theme Time Radio Hour in which the bard shared his love of nostalgia, trivia and music history. One of his 100 episodes was dedicated to Baseball, the Great American Pastime. Until recently it was the one sport that was not dictated by time. You will enjoy Dylan's atypical rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" near the beginning of the show.

No blog post connecting Dylan and baseball would be complete without mentioning the song "Catfish," which was a nod to Hall of Fame pitcher Catfish Hunter, a million-dollar man--"Nobody can throw the ball like Catfish can." The song was actually a collaboration with Jacques Levy, who contributed to seven of the nine songs on Dylan's 1976 album Desire.

Baseball is a game of heroes and dreams, and just like you and me, Dylan has had heroes and dreams. Some of those heroes played baseball.

Baseball is also a game of numbers and statistics. A non-profit group called Retrosheet keeps records of every conceivable stat, even those you seldom, if ever, think about. One page of this statistically bloated catalog is devoted the 302 times players were successfully eliminated from the base paths by the "Hidden Ball Trick."  What a humiliating way to be sent back to the bench. Listen to some of these names of players who fell prey to this deceit: Joe Quinn, Chief Zimmer, Cupid Childs, Hobe Ferris, Birdie Cree, Fred Snodgrass, Happy Felsch, Wildfire Schulte and Bae McBride. 302 ballplayers suffered this indignity. One thing for sure, though. These guys had colorful names. Bump Wills. That's a baseball name.

Lazy stadium night Catfish on the mound “Strike three,” the umpire said Batter have to go back and sit down
Catfish, million-dollar-man Nobody can throw the ball like Catfish can

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SCHEDULE FOR 

DULUTH DYLAN FEST 2026

CLICK HERE

Eddie Mathews, Pete Rose and a Trio of Metals

Five bats in need of a new home.

It's been quite a few years since I hung up my cleats. When I was a kid, baseball was a central passion in my life. That was a long time ago.

In the 90's we befriended a street person named Robert Lookup with whom we remained friends the last ten years of his life. He had several passions: trains, movies and baseball. He had all the earmarks of the Dustin Hoffman character in Rain Man. He was a cauldron of statistics, a schizophrenic and a savant.

The last five years of his life I used to watch movies with him on Sunday evenings. When he passed away I ended up with a few of his possessions, among them an encyclopedia of trains, a notebook detailing the movies he had watched every day for many years, several baseballs signed by players from the Duluth Dukes, and five baseball bats.

I've reach a stage in life where it's time to begin downsizing. The bats pictured here have to find a new home. It's my understanding that Robert used to coach softball in the Twin Cities before he came to Duluth. I'm speculating that these bats were his bats from that period of his life. A very sentimental man, it would have been hard for him to part with them.

Two of the bats are Louisville Sluggers, that gold standard for hitters of all ages. Robert was a big man, and these two bats are adult sized bats. I favored a 33-inch bat when I played in high school. The junior varsity team had a Richie Allen bat that I was especially fond of. 

Robert's Louisville Sluggers are 34 and 34-and-a-half inch bats. One is an Ed Mathews and the other a Pete Rose. Both of these players have a special spot in my memories. 

Ed Mathews Louisville Slugger

In the late 1950s we Major League Baseball had a show called Home Run Derby. This kind of home run competition is still carried on in conjunction with the All Star Game, but back then I believe it was a weekly show for a time. The year I rode across the country with my grandparents by train to Nevada--I was taken out of school for three weeks when I was eight--we stayed with my cousins who had some land outside Reno. What I recall is watching Home Run Derby with my cousins Mitch and David, possibly for the very first time. 

If I remember correctly, they would have a slug-off with two hitters each week. I don't remember the second but the first was Eddie Mathews. He had been the 1959 National League home run champion and one of the best third basemen in baseball. The bat I have is signed Ed Mathews, but he was known to fans as Eddie, like me. A Hall of Famer, he slapped 512 home runs in his career, which puts him among the greats.

Pete Rose Louisville Slugger

Pete Rose was the heartbeat of the Cincinnati Reds, a dominant team from the mid-Sixties well into the Seventies. Peter Edward Rose was the archetype hitter, a guy who played with intensity and determination to give 200% every time he was on the field. Before he was banned from baseball Rose surpassed Ty Cobb's career hitting record with 4,256 career hits. 

It's always tragic when someone who has built a heroic legacy falls. I think of Joe Paterno, O.J. Simpson and Bill Cosby. For Pete Rose what killed his reputation was gambling. Gambling is a snare that has caused many folk to stumble, but Rose crossed a line by betting on baseball and betting on the his own team which I was working for as a player-coach. 

Whereas it is true that we all have feet of clay, so to speak, there are lines that none of us should cross. 

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All that to say I have some bats to get rid of. Two Louisville Sluggers and three metal bats. If you have kids that play ball or you're part of a team, send me a note indicating your interest. I will distribute them based on the response I get. Leave a comment or contact me at ennyman3 AT gmail DOT com. 

This last bat below is a prized possession and not being offered. It's part of my Dylan stash, a gift from someone I did business with in Cleveland. Thank you, David.