Baseball Barnstorming and Exhibition Games, 1901

Baseball post season barnstorming is a phenomenon specific to baseball and to American sports. By the author's count, there have been a minimum of 1,561 games that had been scheduled from 1901 to 1962. Exhibition games added even more liveliness to this post season hubbub of activity. Sometimes in baseball the term ""barnstorming"" was used to mean that movement north (or east) from spring training in Florida and Texas and California, stopping for games at a number of small towns and lesser cities. So the ""barn-"" part of the word was used to emphasize the rural aspect of the games. The ""-storm"" part was used to describe the speed of the movement from game to game. For the players, an aspect of the trip north was simply more games played without their being paid for them.