The late 1940s and early 1950s was the Golden Age for minor league baseball. The National Pastime thrived in small town America with hundreds of professional teams in over 50 leagues playing at every level. The lowest rung of professional baseball—Class D, the "bush leagues"—was an exciting mix of returning soldiers and recent high school grads, all with dreams of climbing up the ladder to make it to the "big show." For seven seasons (1946–1952) the Kansas-Oklahoma-Missouri League offered some of the most memorable bush league baseball of the era. Of the 1,588 young men who donned a KOM League uniform, in places like Independence, Kansas and Ponca City, Oklahoma, 30 made it to the majors and one made it to the Hall of Fame.
John Hall, a former KOM batboy for the Carthage Cubs, has spent ten years researching and collecting KOM history and memorabilia. John has published a KOM newsletter and organized annual KOM reunions since 1994, and is one of the Midwest's foremost historians of the Golden Era of minor league baseball.