The National Game

From Program Notes

Touring musicians often turned to baseball for amusement in their leisure time on the road, and Sousa's band had its own baseball team – Sousa was the pitcher – that played teams from "rival" bands. An avid baseball fan, Sousa once auctioned his conductor's baton to raise funds for baseball equipment for the sailors at the Great Lakes naval training station outside Chicago. He wrote this march for the 50th anniversary of baseball's National League and dedicated it to the first major league Baseball Commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. --James Huff 09:14, 18 November 2007 (UTC) (from the program notes of The Claremont Winds, submitted with permission)