A sudden thunderstorm rolled through the greater metro area late last Wednesday afternoon and Doug sent out the note that the game was off but wanted to know, “anyone going to the bar?”
The bar, of course, is Dusty’s Bar and for many years it has been home to the B-Squad. In fact, finding Dusty’s was the first thing I did after making the strange phone calls to form this new softball “team.” One night Malibar and I drove up and down Marshall looking for just the right place to compliment the strange experiment that was about to launch. I believe we did this before I registered the team with the Park Board.
I wasn’t sure what we were looking for, really. Bar after bar we slipped in, ordered a beer, slipped out. A few places we didn’t even need to finish our beers–they were all wrong. They didn’t know it was an audition but it still felt kind of embarrassing: too dark, too loud, too big, too fancy, too much, way too little. I started to panic. The right bar is a most critical element of what I imagined a softball team needed to be successful.
Then we walked into Dusty’s and instantly recognized the place for the B-Squad. It was just right–from the jukebox to the televisions to the length of the softball-sized table running the middle of the bar. The people were nice, the beer was cold. Plus, there was no softball team there. We didn’t want to become another team in a “softball bar.” We wanted to go to a place you’d go if there wasn’t a game or if you weren’t with your team.
Since that night we’ve made Dusty’s our true home. We’ve made friends with the regulars and folks just passing through, barmaids and occasional bums selling flowers. We come on Wednesdays in the summer, we come for lunch during the off-season or for a Friday night meat raffle. One time I even stopped in for a breakfast Dago before going to work. All told we’ve consumed hundreds of dagos, listened to thousands of songs, and drank millions of beers.
In the second season we asked the owner Pat if he would sponsor us and he has kindly submitted ever since to an annual shakedown, paying our dues to Minneapolis Parks and Rec. By now Pat must know that even if he didn’t sponsor us we’d show up with some sort of sponsored link on our uniforms. Still, he pays just the same and doesn’t ask for trophies or huge bar bills in return. His guidance has always been the same: Have Fun.
We have followed Pat’s advice and Dusty’s has always been the backdrop for the fun. It is safe to say that many of us think that Dusty’s is our bar. But it turns out that Dusty’s is a bar that for fifty five years was owned by a man who by all accounts represents everything that makes the bar special to the B-Squad. Adolph “Dusty” Stebe, passed away on Sunday. The people who knew him well say he was a man of great courage, strength, will and humor. He apparently could remember every customer’s name and his bar, our home, was a place he truly loved. He is survived by many friends and family, including his son Pat who carries on the fine tradition on Marshall avenue to this day.
A few weeks ago some folks we hadn’t seen at Dusty’s before asked us where we were from. Seeing our uniforms one can understand why they might imagine we were some sort of traveling baseball team–maybe from Illinois or Wisconsin or something. We told them, “We’re from here. We are Dusty’s softball team.” She didn’t believe it until we showed her the evidence: the stitching on the side of our hats that say, FOLLOW ME TO DUSTY’S! Tonight we’ll take those hats off and raise a glass in honor of Dusty, his son Pat, and the friends and relatives who loved him because we are Dusty’s softball team.
