Existing comment:
Competing Polkas
The city of Rochester, New York, was baseball-mad in the early nineteenth century, boasting hundreds of local teams, each with a spirited fan base. In September 1858, the first inter-city game was held between the Buffalo Niagaras and Rochester's own Flour City team. Thousands turned out. The victorious Buffalo team hosted the post-game celebration where Buffalo's J. R. Blodgett presented the Flour City team with a copy of his "Baseball Polka," [image 1] dedicated to the Rochester team. This work holds the distinction of being the first original published baseball song. The 1860 "Live Oak Polka" [image 2] is one of five baseball-related color sheet music lithographs dating from the mid-nineteenth century. Its cover features one of the most beautiful and historically significant baseball displays of the pre-Civil War era. Backers of the Live Oak team commissioned music professor J. H. Kalbfleisch to compose and dedicate the song to the Rochester club, likely as an answering salvo to the mounting one-upmanship on the baseball field between their city and Buffalo, where Blodgett's "Baseball Polka" had been published two years earlier.
J.H. Kalbfleisch. "The Live Oak Polka." Rochester, NY: Jos. P. Shaw, 1860. |