NBC tries to take advantage of interest created by Kansas Stars’ appearance

After the Kansas Stars were announced last month for the National Baseball Congress World Series, tournament director Kevin Jenks took calls from representatives of several summer leagues who expressed interest in becoming affiliated with the NBC.

If the tournament had stagnated in the summers before Jenks joined the organization in 2013 or reached a plateau in his first three years, it has received a major boost from the Stars.

The team of former major-league players, organized by Nate Robertson and Adam LaRoche, has drawn attention from national media outlets and from fans who helped Lawrence-Dumont Stadium sell out their first three games.

The attention has also reached the tournament itself, and more will know of its 81-year history when Saturday night’s championship game is televised on ESPNU.

“That’s what we want – let’s get people to jump back on board,” Jenks said. “We’re happy to drive the bandwagon, and that’s exciting. Certainly it all goes to what to Adam and Nate were able to put together.

“I told those guys, I said, ‘I can’t thank you guys enough and show gratitude enough. I hope you guys always know that we’ll always remember that you’re the reason why this got started.”

The chain reaction created by the Stars has been immediate and wide-reaching. More fans attend games, so more sponsors – local businesses and beyond – attach themselves to the tournament.

With more sponsors comes more prize money for all teams and a greater incentive for new teams to play in Wichita or for those who make sporadic appearances to attend more regularly.

Televising the championship game, which Jenks hopes to continue after this year, encapsulates all of those advantages.

“It shows that we’re serious about putting on the best event we possibly can,” Jenks said. “I know that there are people that still view the NBC World Series as a semi-pro tournament, or it’s not as professional as it should be managed and operated.

“That’s where we’re trying to make that change.… It shows our commitment to what this event is about, it shows our commitment to our teams. We want to do it every year, where we’re on ESPN. Our teams, our leagues are able to sell that to their players. You can go to other leagues, but they won’t have the kind of exposure that you can get here.”

Jenks has changed the look of the tournament, trimming the field to 30 teams and using a pool-play format this year that guaranteed each team three games. Every move he makes is designed to keep the current affiliated leagues and teams happy and draw the attention of those with unformed or lapsed relationships.

There’s no replacement for the buzz the created by the Stars and this year’s World Series. When Jenks begins working toward the 2017 tournament, he’ll use it to forge new connections while armed with greater prize money, more visible sponsors and the hope to be televised again.

“We’re trying to get better talent on the field,” Jenks said. “We’ve wavered from that. We’re going after leagues that, from top to bottom, are known to be stronger. That’s my task. That’s one of the things I was hired to do, is to get the best talent on the field at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

This story was originally published August 12, 2016 at 3:03 PM with the headline "NBC tries to take advantage of interest created by Kansas Stars’ appearance."