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Before the days of television and well-paid professional athletes, teams had to venture out in the off season to not only make a little bit of extra cash, but also drum up interest in the teams they played for.

The teams were called barnstormers because they would come into town and play, and normally beat, the best talent that a local community could field.

Thus was the case when the Pittsburgh Pirates barnstormed into Marietta in October of 1915 to face off with the city’s finest.

Before a crowd of 500 people at the Washington County Fairgrounds, Wilbur Cooper struck out 16 local players on the way to the Pirates winning 4-1.

The local team started strong but were slowly worn down by the visitors. The local pitcher struck out just three players in six innings.

The game was over quickly, the two teams played nine innings in just one hour and 15 minutes.

The history of baseball teams barnstorming likely started in 1860 when the Brooklyn Excelsiors traveled around New York playing different teams. Once leagues were formed, teams limited their extra travel to the post season. When the Pirates visited Marietta, it was just after the regular season had ended.

Major league players were frequently at odds with the owners of the teams. The players wanted to make a little bit of extra cash. The owners wanted to prevent players from getting hurt in the off season and the team’s reputation from getting damaged.

“It doesn’t look good for a professional baseball player to be beaten by an amateur or a semi-professional. It discredits the league players, and if they are defeated it causes remarks to be made about their inability to beat a town nine,” said Ban Johnson, the American League president at the time, and a former student at Marietta College.

At that time the baseball team’s contracts with the players expired at the end of the season, there was little that the league or the owners could do to prevent the players from playing baseball.

Many sports “barnstormed” but it was most common with baseball. Television and radio and the broadcasting of games caused the practice to fade away in the 1950s when broadcast games allowed fans a chance to watch and listen to regular-season games without travel.

Art Smith is online manager of The Times, he can be reached at asmith@newsandsentinel.com