By Matt Veto, mveto@qconline.com.
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Don’t spend too much time here, friends. You won’t find much about the Cubs. The VetoPower blog has moved to its own site. Check it out on www.qconline.com/bloggers/vetopower and set it as your homepage.
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This blog space will be used for more miscellaneous sports topics.
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Don’t comment here, comment there.
Steve Tappa, stappa@qconline.com
Moline Dispatch/Rock Island Argus prep football writer
Sept. 29, 2008, 5:47 pm
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Geneseo and Sherrard each paid a steep price for losing last weekend.
Both were Top-5 locally-rated teams just a week ago, but both tumbled out of the Top 10 in the Quad Cities Prep Football Power Poll.
The release of the local rankings was delayed a day by a special results package for the Quad Cities Marathon. This season’s sixth installment was determined again by balloting of the sports staffs at WQAD-TV 8, The Dispatch, The Rock Island Argus and the Leader newspapers.
By Matt Veto, mveto@qconline.com
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So, the Dodgers it is.
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I think my buddy Jeremy said it best Sunday, “Relax and enjoy it. The Cubs are the favorites.”
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It’s true. But I’m still nervous — you know — in a Cubs-haven’t-won-a-World-Series-in-100-years-and-look-really-good kind of way.
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Derek Lowe, Chad Billingsley and Hiroki Kuroda vs. Ryan Dempster, Carlos Zambrano and Rich Harden.
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The Kuroda-Harden match up is really intriguing. Kuroda carved up the Cubs pretty good earlier this season, and Harden has a tendency to do the same against his opponents.
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The Dodgers reportedly will not throw a fourth man, which hopefully gives the Cubs an upper hand in the rest category. It has been said that Greg Maddux would have been the fourth guy.
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By Matt Veto, mveto@qconline.com
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Who the Cubs will face in the post season has a lot to do with how well they play against the Brewers this season. So far, not well.
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The same logic should stand to reason for the post-season pitching line up, right? Well, as I suggested, Bob Howry has sealed his spot (no, not on his couch, in the post season).
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Lou Piniella has named Bob Howry to the post-season roster, though he said there is still one more bullpen spot to play around with. We suggested on here that Howry was that play-around guy, so I guess that leaves Jeff Samardzija’s spot in question — maybe Neal Cotts.
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At any rate, the rotation was at least confirmed and it’s a big different than I thought. Ryan Dempster will lead off followed by Carlos Zambrano, Rich Harden and Ted Lilly (apparently tossing your glove onto the mound on national TV doesn’t get you far).
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By Matt Veto, mveto@qconline.com
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Ryan Dempster is your game-one playoff starter.
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Are you OK with that?
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I am.
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Dempster is every bit as good as Carlos Zambrano, but I think there is a perception that he isn’t. That perception comes from the oft-ill used word “ace.”
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By Matt Veto, mveto@qconline.com
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Let me start by saying I’m just coming down from one of the greatest events of my life in organizing a night game at Modern Woodmen Park for the sandlot-style baseball league I created in 1998. We played a pick-up game in front of fans Monday at the Minor League ballpark and collected 323 pounds of food for the River Bend Foodbank in Moline.
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I have been incredibly busy setting that up over the last two weeks, so I am happy to rejoin you unencumbered by that. (And heck, while we’re shamelessly plugging, why not check out our Web site, www.thevlb.com. Perhaps you’d like to play some ball next year.)
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While we’re talking about rejoining (insert forced segue here), let’s talk about who’s going to join the Cubs on their playoff journey. It’s time to pick your 25-man roster.
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We’re going to start with pitchers in this blog.
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Steve Tappa, stappa@qconline.com
Moline Dispatch/Rock Island Argus prep football writer
Sept. 21, 2008, 10:00 pm
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The prep football season hits the regular-season’s halfway mark this week.
No wonder the team’s in the running to receive an A on their mid-term grades are beginning to dwindle in the eyes of our voters in the Quad Cities Prep Football Power Poll.
Just 16 squads, down from last week’s season-high 19, received votes in today’s release of the local rankings.
And, as local sportswriters and broadcasters begin to laser in on this season’s true contenders, just one team fell from the QC Top 10, presented by WQAD-TV 8, The Dispatch, The Rock Island Argus and the Leader newspapers.
By Matt Veto, mveto@qconline.com
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One clinch down.
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That’s how I am thinking as a fan, and as a fan, that’s what I hope the Cubs are thinking right now.
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Let them celebrate first, of course.
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Wearing goggles and Central Division champion shirts, the Cubs are spraying champagne and celebrating in a tiny clubhouse as this is being written. It’s the second consecutive season that some clubhouse manager had to hang plastic on the walls (the poor clubby in Cincinnati last year).
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That hasn’t happened in a long time.
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By Todd Mizener – D/A Photo Editor – tmizener@qconline.com
Since Matt is busy with HS sports coverage I thought I’d help him out and post the YouTube link to Eddie Vedder’s new Chicago Cubs tribute song. The Pearl Jam front man and Cubs fan recorded the song back in August during a solo show at the Auditorium Theatre. Vedder reportedly penned the song at the request of Mr. Cub himself Ernie Banks.
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According to the Chicago Sun-Times and the Pearl Jam Web site, the song will be available for download in the ‘‘next few days.’’ The song may also be sold on CD and “souvenir 45 singles”. For the kids out there – 45’s are old school ‘downloads’ which are made of vinyl. You can’t play them on your iPod.
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In my humble opinion Vedder did a fantastic job of following in the footsteps of fellow Cubs fan/musician Steve Goodman who wrote the “Go, Cubs, Go” song back in 1984. Goodman, many of you will remember, died just four days before the Cubs clinched the 1984 National League Eastern Division title for the first time in their long history. The post season birth in 1984 was the Cubs first since 1945.
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Vedder’s new song seems to gently mesh the optimism of “Go, Cubs, Go” with folk song styling of Goodman’s other classic Cubs song – “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request”. Goodman also wrote “When the Cubs Go Marching In”.
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Hopefully the Cubs will clinch soon and we can all take a deep breath and get ready for the wild ride.
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By Matt Veto, mveto@qconline.com
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Aside from the Cubs 8-run comeback against the Rockies, Thursday’s two-out, ninth-inning comeback might have been the greatest game of the season.
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It was a pretty poor game up to that point. Rich Harden looked rusty and Jeff Samardzija had a rough game. But, thank you Geo Soto for making my day.
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