Thank you, Carrie, for your note and additional research!That is great that you have found her version is different, except for the name.

I am curious as to what has sparked your research- very few people these days even know who she is. I’m glad that she had the fame she deserved back in her day but sad that it did not continue. Her WWI travels were much more dangerous than those of Bob Hope and she initially did not have the backing of the military as he did, but his legacy lives on and hers does not. Maybe it is just that she lived too far in the past.

Appreciate you reading my posts, and if you find anything that needs to be corrected or added to, please let me know!

You might be interested to know that the Library of Congress now has a listing for Wittmaak’s sheet music of “Fascinating Baseball Slide”, along with a scan:
https://www.loc.gov/resource/music.musbaseball-100165/?st=gallery

And strangely enough, the song is completely different from the recorded Elsie Janis version! It would seem that she did write hers herself.

But then the question remains: did she and Wittmaak independently come up with the title, or was her version somehow a reference to Wittmaak’s, which was released before hers? Did she see the title somewhere and write her own version? Or was it the other way around? (In any case, I do think her song is catchier!)

Thank you for your research!