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

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What are the Pros and Cons of Today's Most Controversial Issues? Here's a Place to Start

Have you ever held a position on an issue and wondered why or how anyone could hold the contrary position? Or, have you ever held a position on an issue in which everyone seemed in opposition to your personal convictions?

Well, here's a great resource that might help you gain insights on how the other side thinks. Or, if seeking rhetorical firepower it could give you ammunition for what your gut has been telling you all along. (Read on.)

When not listening to audio books I occasionally would have National Public Radio (NPR) on during my lunch hour as I drove to and from wherever I was eating that day. For a period of time (and maybe still, I don't know) they would have a Friday debate on various issues with two people for and two people against a proposition on this or that contemporary issue. If I remember correctly, they would poll the audience before the debate and then again afterwards. The team that influenced the most audience members to the cross the divide would be declared winner.

What I liked about it was how it showed the listening audience that even the most controversial issues can have two sides. Whether capital punishment, concealed handguns, banning books or the relevance of the electoral college, all kinds of issues have smart people on opposite sides of the coin.

In their book The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff note the polarization that has been occurring in our contemporary culture, and how unhealthy it is on several levels. On many college campuses it seems that kids want to only hear one point of view on things, concluding that any view beyond my own is illegitimate, nonconstructive, invalid, not worth consideration and harmful. 

This last point is a major point of the book. In our efforts to raise the current generation in a "safe" way we have made them so fragile that they may have a hard time when they get into the real world of hard knocks.

This singleminded group-think is not just college kids. It has become pervasive in all age groups and demographics. As I have noted elsewhere, citing Eric Hoffer and Orwell, it makes the masses easier to manipulate when they can be induced to clump together in fear in an Us vs. Them stance. 

What the writers of Coddling note is that college used to be a place where students were taught How to think, not What to think. Today this fundamental idea is being challenged on many campuses. Hence the student riots and protests designed to keep certain speakers out these past few years.

I remember sitting in an adult Sunday school class in the 60s in which guests representing various alternative beliefs were invited so they could present their views and be questioned. I can't recall most other than the one from SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, an antiwar group which eventually spawned the Weathermen, a radical branch that used terrorist tactics including bombings. (In one 18 month period from 1971-72 there were five bombings a day around the country!)

The point here is that giving voice to other perspectives was all part of what students fought for in the Sixties Free Speech Movement. How strange it is to find students fighting for just the opposite, shutting down speakers whom they disagree with.

ALL THIS TO SAY that for open-minded people seeking to examine both sides of various issues, the pro and con of Health & Medicine, Education, Political Issues, Science & Technology and more, this is a site worth bookmarking: PROCON.ORG

I've not gone through every category here but the topics I reviewed seem to represent, in a fair and intelligent manner, both sides on many of our most controversial issues. 

It's an approach that I like because few of us, if any, can be experts in every category of every issue. Yet somehow we're continually prodded to "take a stand" on all these issues based on whatever media feed we pay attention to. Sometimes people will even pressure you. "How can can you not know what you think on this?" But the truth is, unless you have researched things a bit, how can you not remain on the sidelines? Issues are complex and multi-faceted.

I believe it is useful to listen to the other side. How can we practice discernment if we always wear earplugs? The ability to discern, to weigh things in the balance, to give them their proper weight, is all part of growing up.

Related Links
The Coddling of the American Mind and its associated website.
Bubble-Wrapped Americans: How the U.S. Became Obsessed with Physical and Emotional Safety