Semi-Pros

Beneath the upper crust of professional U. S. baseball is a goulash of minor-league clubs that range from Class AA down to Class D. Bottom crust is composed of 25,000 teams and 400,000 players rolled into an organization called the National Semi-Pro Baseball Congress.

At Wichita, Kans. last week, 26 of the best sand-lot teams in the country, the winners of district, State and regional contests, batted it out under floodlights for the U. S. semi-pro championship. After a two-week round robin, the Buford (Ga.) Bona Allens, who came to the tournament with a record of 96 victories in 112 games this season, went home with a purse of $5,000 and the national title.

To the semi-pros, baseball is not a full-time job. The Bona Allens, like 50% of their bottom-crust classmen, are for the most part factory workers (at about $125 a month) for the company (Bona Allen leather company) that owns the team. The other half of the semi-pro class play on teams owned by small-town merchant groups or individuals with $5,000 and a yen to own a ball club. They include many a onetime major-leaguer on his way out, many a schoolboy on his way up. But the backbone of the semi-pros are barbers, butchers, lumberjacks, bootblacks and other workmen who play baseball three times a week (two twilight games and one on Sunday) for a little extra revenue (usually $2 to $5 a game). They are content to job along as sandlotters, but the goal of the up & coming schoolboy is to be seen by big-league scouts--who picked up 156 semi-pros last year.

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