The National Baseball Congress and its now well-established World Series were the brainchild of Wichita sporting goods salesman Hap Dumont in the midst of the Depression. Dumont hatched the idea after watching a Sunday baseball game between circus clowns in Wichita for the week and local firemen. While the circus wasn't allowed to perform on Sunday due to the blue laws of the day, the clowns in the baseball game drew a large crowd. Dumont figured he had stumbled onto something. That's when he created the National Semi-Pro Baseball Congress Kansas State Tournament, played for the first time in 1931 on Island Park in the middle of the Arkansas River, just north of Second Street. He made a few bucks on the event and made it bigger the next several years, until a cigarette was left burning ...