If you hang around long enough, or honestly just read enough, everything comes around again. Barnstorming was a huge part of baseball in the early days of the game, and in the ‘20s and ‘30s, the legends of Negro League stars like Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige began coming into their own on offseason tours of the South.
The professionalization of baseball, as players started earning enough to make the six-month season their only primary work for the year, led to the decline of barnstorming. But, as we say, everything comes around again, with MLB introducing a new form of the classic barnstorm yesterday with Home Run Derby X.