February 12, 2024

Good morning friends,

    There cannot be any institutions, more iconically American than banjos and baseball. Both  came into popular culture in this country around the same time. Banjos and baseball have intertwined in so many aspects of American culture for the past 175 years. They both represented the entertainment of the common person. The first baseball game was played in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1848 which was approximately the time the Minstrel shows started to make their impact on popular American culture in large cities across the Northeast. Now, I’m no historian, but I can definitely see how these two American institutions have made an impact on the culture of America. I have often said that the banjo has changed in form as America did. Starting off as a slow moving horse and carriage, and evolving across the decades into a powerful locomotive. Baseball has followed a similar trajectory. Once, a slow paced, pastoral game it is still the national pastime even at its frenetic pace.

     And so it was the other day that Gavin Rice came to me and played, in the classic style, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game". It was as if a lightbulb went off in my head! Banjos and baseball..well, why not! Now Rochester, New York has one of the oldest baseball teams in the International League the Rochester Red Wings go back nearly 100 years, but baseball was played here first in 1877. I immediately thought….we need to connect the dots here. We need to have a game of baseball with banjos. No, I’m not going to lend my fine banjos to be batting around the diamond, but I am in contact with the management at the Rochester Red Wings to have a game that features banjos. We will have the Star-Spangled Banner played on the banjo as well as at the seventh inning stretch. We will have strolling banjo players in the concessions area, and in the stands. We will have a banjo clinic and drawing for a free banjo. The date has not been set and we are still in the negotiation stage, but we look forward to this summer of having a super event presented by Bernunzio Uptown Music at the downtown field in Rochester. We will keep you all posted. Any banjo players wanting to participate should contact me through the store.

Sincerely,

John Bernunzio

PS

Etymology

banjo hit "a weakly hit ball" (from a fanciful comparison of the pinging sound made by a weak hit to the sound of a banjo)

In Banjoland