In athletics terminology, barnstorming refers to sports teams or individual athletes that travel to various locations, usually small towns, to stage exhibition matches. Barnstorming teams differ from

traveling team Travel is the movement of people between distant geographical locations. Travel can be done by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, bus, airplane, ship or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round trip. Travel ca ...

s in that they operate outside the framework of an established athletic league, while traveling teams are designated by a league, formally or informally, to be a designated visiting team. Barnstorming allowed athletes to compete in two sports; for example, Goose Reece Tatum played basketball for the Harlem Globetrotters and baseball for a

Negro leagues The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams of African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latin Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be ...

barnstorming team. Some barnstorming teams lack home arenas, while others go on "barnstorming tours" in the off-season.

History

Teams in baseball's

often barnstormed before, during, and after their league's regular season. Hall of Fame baseball pitcher

Satchel Paige Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige (July 7, 1906 – June 8, 1982) was an American professional baseball pitcher who played in Negro league baseball and Major League Baseball (MLB). His career spanned five decades and culminated with his induction ...

barnstorm toured with

Dempsey Hovland Dempsey Hovland (December 11, 1918 – 1979) was a baseball and basketball barnstorming entrepreneur and promoter and multiple sports team owner. He founded the 20th Century Booking Agency, a sports booking management for arranging and marketing of ...

's Caribbean Kings. Hovland founded (and owned) several barnstorming teams, including the Texas Cowgirls (1949–1977), the first integrated professional

women's basketball Women's basketball is the team sport of basketball played by women. It began being played in 1892, one year after men's basketball, at Smith College in Massachusetts. It spread across the United States, in large part via women's college compet ...

team to tour worldwide, and the

New York Harlem Queens Dempsey Hovland (December 11, 1918 – 1979) was a baseball and basketball barnstorming entrepreneur and promoter and multiple sports team owner. He founded the 20th Century Booking Agency, a sports booking management for arranging and marketing of ...

. The Harlem Globetrotters and Texas Cowgirls shared training camps, seasons, and circuits. While barnstorming is no longer as popular as it was in the 20th century, some teams such as basketball's Harlem Globetrotters,

softball Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Han ...

's King and His Court founded by

Eddie Feigner Eddie "The King" Feigner (, ; March 25, 1925 – February 9, 2007) was an American softball pitcher and entertainer. Biography Born Myrle Vernon King (Eddie Feigner) in Walla Walla, Washington, he played softball for much of his early life, ...

and ice hockey's

Buffalo Sabres Alumni Hockey Team The Buffalo Sabres Alumni Hockey Team is an independent barnstorming hockey (and occasionally basketball) team located in Buffalo, New York. Its roster consists entirely of retired National Hockey League players, mostly former members of the Buff ...

carry on the tradition. In the 1990s the Colorado Silver Bullets women's baseball team resurrected barnstorming because there was no women's league. It was very common in the early days of professional American football; for instance, the Los Angeles Wildcats of the first

American Football League The American Football League (AFL) was a major professional American football league that operated for ten seasons from 1960 until 1970, when it merged with the older National Football League (NFL), and became the American Football Conference. ...

(AFL) of 1926 played the regular season as a traveling team, then went on a post-season barnstorming tour of Texas and California, with

Red Grange Harold Edward "Red" Grange (June 13, 1903 – January 28, 1991), nicknamed "the Galloping Ghost" and "the Wheaton Iceman", was an American football halfback for the University of Illinois, the Chicago Bears, and the short-lived New York Yankees ...

and the

New York Yankees The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. They are one ...

as the designated opponent for most of these games.

NFL The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the majo ...

teams were also known to barnstorm in small towns against local teams all the way up through World War II. Several auto racers, most notably

Barney Oldfield Berna Eli "Barney" Oldfield (January 29, 1878 – October 4, 1946) was an American pioneer automobile racer; his "name was synonymous with speed in the first two decades of the 20th century". After success in bicycle racing, he began auto r ...

, staged exhibitions around the United States in the early twentieth century. In 1914 he barnstormed against the aviator

Lincoln Beachey Lincoln Beachey (March 3, 1887 – March 14, 1915) was a pioneer American aviator and barnstormer. He became famous and wealthy from flying exhibitions, staging aerial stunts, helping invent aerobatics, and setting aviation records. He was kn ...

at least 35 times. In

rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its m ...

, the

Barbarians A barbarian (or savage) is someone who is perceived to be either uncivilized or primitive. The designation is usually applied as a generalization based on a popular stereotype; barbarians can be members of any nation judged by some to be less ...

, an invitation-only team, are famous for having no ground or clubhouse."History of the Barbarians"
Barbarian F.C. official website

Teams

*American football ** Los Angeles Wildcats **

Tampa Cardinals The Tampa Cardinals were a barnstorming football team, that played pick-up games, led by future Pro Football Hall of Famer, Jim Thorpe in 1926. During the time, the team was also billed as the St. Petersburg Cardinals and as Lena Vistas. The team ...

*Baseball ** Caribbean Kings ** House of David, a baseball team that toured rural United States from the 1920s until the 1950s **

Indianapolis Clowns The Indianapolis Clowns were a professional baseball team in the Negro American League. Tracing their origins back to the 1930s, the Clowns were the last of the Negro league teams to disband, continuing to play exhibition games into the 1980s. The ...

*Basketball ** Harlem Globetrotters **Texas Cowgirls **

Washington Generals The Washington Generals are an American basketball team who play exhibition games against the Harlem Globetrotters. The team has also played under several different aliases in their history as the Globetrotters' perennial opponents. Function ...

*Cricket **

Bunbury Cricket Club Bunbury may refer to: Places * Bunbury, Cheshire, England Australia *Bunbury, South Australia, a locality ** Bunbury Conservation Reserve, a protected area in South Australia. * Bunbury, Western Australia, a city in Western Australia ** Bunbury, ...

** Kaipaki Nation Cricket Club"Kaipaki Nation Cricket Club"
/ref> *Ice hockey **

Flying Fathers The Flying Fathers are a group of Canadian Roman Catholic priests who regularly tour North America as an ice hockey team, playing exhibition games against local teams to raise money for charities. The team had the motto "praying and playing". His ...

** Montreal Canadiens Legends *Rugby union **

Barbarian F.C. The Barbarian Football Club, known as the Barbarians is a British-based invitational rugby union club. The Barbarians play in black and white hoops, though players wear socks from their own club strip. Membership is by invitation. As of 2011, ...

*Softball **King and His Court

Other

The

Lancaster Barnstormers The Lancaster Barnstormers (colloquially known as the Stormers) are an American professional baseball team based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They are a member of the North Division of the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball, a "partner leag ...

are a professional baseball team based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They are a member of the Freedom Division of the

Atlantic League of Professional Baseball The Atlantic League of Professional Baseball (ALPB) is a professional independent baseball league based in the United States. It is an official MLB Partner League based in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern United States. The Atlantic League's ...

, and do not engage in actual barnstorming.

In popular culture

* In the 2001 book ''

Danger Boy Danger Boy, is a young adult time travel series of books written by Mark London Williams. The series began in 2019, and is about adventures of twelve-year-old Eli Sands and his companions: Clyne, a dinosaur from another planet, and Thea, last libra ...

'' by

Mark London Williams Mark London Williams is an American author, playwright, journalist, and creator of the Golden Duck-nominated, Los Angeles Times Bestsellin oung adult literature, young adult time travel series '' Danger Boy'', and author of ''Max Random and the ...

, ''Barnstormers'' is a

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedback m ...

the main character plays, in which players choose humans, vampires, zombies, and other creatures to assemble a barnstorming baseball team that travels the country competing against other teams.

History

Teams

Other

In popular culture

References

Further reading