The Baseball Polka

Pictorial sheet music covers offer some of the earliest images of American adults playing baseball. Created as attractive enticements to buyers of musical scores, such covers typically portrayed scenes of contemporary interest to a broad, popular audience. Often commissioned by local teams or patrons, such ditties as "The Live Oak Polka" were dedicated to the hometown nine, sold and distributed largely withing a proscribed urban area, while the "Base Ball Polka" (1867) was issued and dedicated to the sport's "fraternity."