Minnesota ‘townball’ history will always have a huge chapter on Bill Nelson and Dundas

DUNDAS, MINN. – State amateur baseball was the common reference to the game played around Minnesota in the late spring and summer, and then we went to town team baseball, and now that often is shortened to townball.

No matter the handle, my rediscovery of this activity decades ago as a source for occasional columns does give Star Tribune commenters an instant barb when disagreeing with an opinion on meatier subjects (such as P.J. Fleck):

“Reusse should stick to small town baseball.”

The Dundas Dukes probably have been involved in more of those column efforts than any other team, starting with 1980 in Cold Spring, when the Dukes lost to New Ulm Kaiserhoff and Terry Steinbach in the championship game.

Bill Nelson was a star pitcher for Dundas.

“I was 28 then and Steiny was 18 and the MVP of the tournament,” Nelson said. “Mike Gelfand covered it for the Star Tribune, and he wrote that my career was on the horizon and Steiny’s was all in front of him.”

Nelson pitched regularly for eight more summers, then became Dukes manager and remained the chief procurer for talent starting in 1989.

Steinbach? He played three seasons for the Gophers, 14 in the big leagues, three All-Star Games and seven RBI in the 1989 World Series.

“Gelfand wasn’t wrong,” Nelson said this week.

A month ago, when the floods were hitting southern Minnesota (and elsewhere), I took a drive to Dundas to see that the village’s Memorial Park was under water.

The Cannon River was over its banks behind the fences and the playing field was under a foot of water, perhaps more.

The outlook for more home games seemed ominous. Less than a month later, the Cannon was back where it belonged and the playing field was a spectacular green for a weeknight game with the neighboring Northfield Knights.

I was there to watch a few innings of this game with Nelson. On this perfect baseball evening, we happened to be talking about Big Lew Olson, the greatest Duke of all — the slugging MVP of the 1982 state champs.

“Lew would hit ’em over the trees, sometimes into the river,” Nelson said.

And that moment, Nate Van Roekel, a good-sized (not Lew-sized) Duke of today, hit a drive toward left-center field, and that ball was gone … 2-0 for the home team early.

I took that blast as a tribute to Big Lew, and also to Nelson, the all-time Dundas baseball man and the receiver of bad news in recent days.

The townball world is widespread but also a small one where word travels fast.

Suddenly, there were several texts a couple weeks ago with this message: Bill Nelson was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

The last time we talked, when the Dundas ballyard was flooded, he was in Florida with several of his brothers to celebrate Bruce’s 80th birthday.

“I wasn’t feeling great then, but we thought it was pancreatitis,” Nelson said. “Turned out there was cancer. It’s a tough one, but we’ll give chemo a try.”

Harold and Marilynn Nelson had a farm in Clarks Grove, near Albert Lea, with six sons: Bruce, Bob, Byron, Bill and Greg in a decade, then John eight years later.

Greg was Bill’s catcher for Albert Lea High School, for Augsburg and Dick’s Place, the powerhouse state amateur team run in the Twin Cities by Gary Demars.

Pitcher John would follow the Nelson lineage to Augsburg, where he set a Division III record with 15 complete games in a season. Bill and John are in Augsburg’s Hall of Fame.

Dundas won two state titles with Bill as a pitcher, two more with him as a manager. They won again in 2015 with Mike Ludwig as manager, and have finished as runners-up eight times in their history.

Dundas improved its already outstanding ballyard when it co-hosted the state tournament with Faribault and Miesville in 2022.

As a prelim, Nelson set up a banquet in which all MVPs from previous state tournaments were invited. Sixty-two showed up — including Jim Eisenreich, for St. Cloud Beaudreau’s in 1984. And Steiny was there, too.

“That was a great night,” Nelson said.

It was another of those this week — Dukes win 8-7, and Nelson there with his wife, Pat.

“Someone said to Pat, ‘You must really like baseball to be married to him,” Nelson said. “And Pat answered, ‘I liked baseball before I liked Bill.’ ”