[Runscott]

I'm surprised I never read this, as I've read most of Creamer's books - fantastic baseball writer.

Here's an excerpt that talks about Stengel's semi-pro career, and his signing with the Kansas City Blues. The following picks up after a description of Stengel and his friends heading out in 1907 to look for work in the wheat fields, where they ended up playing baseball. I believe the 1908 references to the Red Sox actually refer to the Bentons, Bidwell's first team.

"Stengel's reputation as a ballplayer was growing. A year after the trip to the wheat fields he made another journey west [1908], this time with the Kansas City Red Sox, a slick semipro team (Casey always said "sam-eye pro"). A Central High student named Ira Bidwell had organized the tour, spending the spring writing letters and setting up a schedule. The team went as far west as Utah, playing local teams practically every day, but substituting basketball games in local YMCAs when it rained. The star of the Red Sox was a right-handed pitcher named Claude Hendrix from Olathe, Kansas, a few miles south of Kansas City. Hendrix, a little older than Stengel, followed Ivy Olson into professional ball a year or so later. He, too, would meet Stengel again.
The barnstorming trip with the Red Sox was Stengel's first introduction to the sometimes carefree, somewhat rowdy life of a professional, playing ball every day, chasing around for something to do at night. In 1908 much of their entertainment lay in horseplay, the callow humor that is still evident among baseball players and other athletes. In Stengel's time it was heavy with such subtleties as dumping buckets of water on unsuspecting people, putting snakes in teammates' beds, and so on. Dutch Stengel ate it up. The travel and the fun were major compensations for the players, who were paid only $1 a day, along with rooms and meals.
Despite this more overt venture into play-for-pay baseball, Stengel was back pitching for Central High again in the spring of 1909, his last year. He was the unquestioned star of the team.

... [description of Stengel's final year of baseball at Central High]

He went off again with the semipro Red Sox that summer, playing games as far east as St. Louis and out west again up into Wyoming and back. He was finishing his fourth year in high school that fall (he was a midyear student) when the local minor-league team, the Kansas City Blues, came after him. The Blues were in the American Association, the highest level of minor-league ball, just one step below the majors. In January 1910, Dutch completed four years in high school but lacked sufficient credits to graduate. He decided to chuck school and go with the Blues.
Because he was only nineteen, he needed parental approval. Breezily, he approached his father, contract in hand, and said, "Here, Pop, sign this, will you?"
"What is it?"
"It's a contract to play ball with the Blues. You have to sign it because I'm under twenty-one."
"What about school?"
"Ah, I'm finished with school. The Blues will pay me $135 a month."
That was a lot of money for a boy of nineteen.