History
Dumont said he was inspired to start the league after seeing a huge crowd for the circus clown-firemen baseball game in Wichita (the clowns were not allowed to perform on Sundays because of Blue Laws). In 1931 he started the National Semi-Pro Baseball Congress Kansas State Tournament which played on an island of the Arkansas River.
After a fire destroyed the stadium, the city built the Lawrence Stadium. In 1935 he offered Satchel Paige $1,000 to bring his touring Bismarck Churchills from, Bismarck, North Dakota, team to Wichita. Paige struck out 60 batters and won four games. With the rise of Minor League Baseball, the league now is for amateur athletes.
Read more about this topic: National Baseball Congress
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