Archive for the ‘Announcements’ Category

As mentioned in Monday’s episode, awards season is upon us and we at Cubscast would like to honor those that have operated the best Cubs-related websites in 2009. The aptly named “Best Cubs Website Awards” (or “The Strodes” for short) will be broadcast in a special episode on Monday March 8th.

We need to know what you consider to be the best Cubs websites — and we’re taking nominations in each of the following categories:

Best Cubs Blog – Individual Author

Cubs Personality Lifetime Achievement Award

The sort-of-fine print:

Our goal in doing this is to draw attention to the best Cubs websites currently available. Cubscast is not eligible for any awards, please do not nominate this site. All other nominations will be considered by the Cubscast hosts, unless at our discretion a nominated website is deemed inappropriate, ineligible (does not fit into the category it was nominated for), or deemed to contain or promote illegal or pornographic content. Anyone is eligible to nominate a site. All decisions regarding nominations and awards are final.

How this works:

To participate, simply nominate your favorite Cubs website(s) today in the comments on this post. At the end of every week (or sooner), nominated sites will be added to an online voting feature on this site. Nominations will be closed at the end of the day on Friday February 26, 2010.

When nominations are closed, the top 3 vote-getters in each category will be considered finalists. The award winner in each category will then be decided upon by the two Cubscast hosts. Winners will be announced on Monday March 8, 2010. Good luck!

As mentioned in our shows leading up to the Cubs Convention, Cubscast hosts Lou and Sheps are giving away two tickets to any regular season game this season. We’ll choose 1 winner at random from all the entries, and that person gets to choose from any regular season game this season. Opening Day. Cubs/Sox. Cubs/Cardinals. Whatever you want. We figured this was the most convenient way to give away Cubs tickets to our listeners and/or people that we meet at this year’s Cubs Convention.

To enter, simply click here or on the graphic below and fill out the entry form.

We’ll hold the drawing “live” on the episode that airs on Wednesday, February 17th, the day that pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training in sunny Mesa.

Here’s the fine print.

The contest ends mid-afternoon on Feb. 16th, so get your entry in now (click the graphic above). Good luck!

Thanks to all the great Cubs fans and Andre Dawson fans that responded to this idea on Twitter and in the post below earlier this week. This project is a go!

We’re calling on all Cubs fans to post comments that include the special hashtag #Dawson4TheHall to Twitter starting on Tuesday December 8th at 1:20 PM Central Time. Tweets must include the #Dawson4TheHall hashtag in order to be counted, and we also recommend that the #cubs and #mlb tags are included.

The goal, you ask? We want to draw as much attention as possible to Dawson’s bid (his 9th) to become elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame. If enough people send tweets using the #Dawson4TheHall hashtag, it will become a trending topic on Twitter. The timing could work out very well as many beat writers and journalists (some of whom have an actual ballot to cast) will be keeping an eye on Twitter to monitor the winter meetings from Indy that day.

Please tell all the Cubs fans you know! If everyone tells 5 people and so on, this has a good chance of working. Show your support for one of the best Cubs outfielders ever!

Big thanks to Tim Souers from Cubby-Blue for creating these awesome graphics.

Media Note:
If you are looking to cover this event and need a quick interview, please send an e-mail to hosts@cubscast.com or find us on Twitter, we’re @cubscasthosts.

Several listeners have sent us Cubs songs that they’ve heard (or sang) over the last few months and it took us awhile to edit everything together, but today we’re proud to release a special music episode (download – mp3) today on Thanksgiving. If you enjoy lame parody and auto-tuning, this is a gold mine for you. If not, you still might enjoy it so please take a listen. Sheps screams “Word to your mother!” and that’s definitely worth the price of admission. Yeah, it’s free.

The songs included are:

1. World Series Champions – Kevin Henrickson
2. Milton Bradley and Jim Hendry at Dinner – Lou
3. I Guess That’s Why I Bleed Cubbie Blue – Danny Rockett
4. Ricketts Man – Lou
5. Get On the Big Blue Train – Ted Norstrom

In case it was hard to understand, here are the lyrics for Ricketts Man:

I blocked the view last night – that’s right
1060. Addison.
But Horseshoe rollin high as a kite by then
I hate that roof so much it causes strife
It’s phony, Cubs ad space
In such a timeless fight

And I think it’s gonna be a long long time
Till Cub fans know it ain’t about the sign
I’m not the man they rent the roof off home
Oh no no no I’m a Ricketts man
Ricketts man says Binionaires will never own

Boxcars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids
Those books, are old as Zell
And there’s no pun there to save them if you did
Child homelessness I don’t understand
It’s just my job five days a week
To be a Ricketts man—, Ricketts man

And I think it’s gonna be a long long time…

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Lou

As mentioned in Wednesday’s episode – download now, one of the most common questions Sheps and I are asked by Cubscast listeners is “How can I support the show?” We’ve wondered how to answer that question for some time. Feedback in the some of e-mails, voicemails, reviews, etc never ceases to amaze us — you guys have kept us going through some good and bad seasons and we truly appreciate it.

Cubscast will always be free to listen to, that’s extremely important to us. So after kicking around some ideas amongst ourselves about how we think we can improve the show, we took a survey of about 150 listeners last month. The response was awesome…we got some excellent comments and good criticism. Also, much to our surprise over 90% of the people who responded mentioned that they’d be happy to donate something to help with the costs of running the show.

We’ve been steadily making some improvements over the last few weeks, and yesterday we added a brand new Support Cubscast page (there’s also a link at the top right of this page). If you want to donate to Cubscast, feel free. If not, that’s fine, too. You can write in a donation amount or choose from a few different options. And we can’t be more clear, donations are awesome but completely voluntary! It’s up to you.

Every so often we’ll mention this on the show, probably every couple months.

We’re also going to try to do something special for anyone that donates, so for the month of September if you donate any amount (even $1 helps) we’ll send you a Cubscast Bingo card. Hopefully it’ll add a little entertainment to some upcoming games.

Thanks as always for supporting the show, both Sheps and I truly appreciate it!

Also big thanks to Steve, Jeremy, and Lynn, our first three donors (and bingo players).

If your answer is “yes,” we invite you to take our new Cubscast listener survey. Just like the team we follow, we’re gearing up for the stretch run and are looking for feedback on how to improve our podcast. Sheps and I also are looking for some honest feedback on the show in general, episode length and frequency, etc.

The survey takes about 5 minutes to complete, is 10 questions in length and is completely anonymous, unless you want to share your contact info with us.

Thanks for your feedback! It’s much appreciated.

We can’t wait for 6 PM tonight as Big Z will be taking the mound for his 5th consecutive Opening Day start, this time vs. Roy Oswalt and the ‘Stros. Carlos looked great throughout spring training, so I’m excited to see him carry it over to this new season. If he gets through 5 innings, I won’t be throwing the blue road alternate jersey beer cozy I received as a Christmas gift across the room. But we’ll see.

It took an all-nighter last night to get everything in order, but today we announced our long-awaited technological innovation on episode #499. Is it what you expected? It’s the brand new 140 Characters from Home Plate feature on our site (link at the top right of every page). We envision this as something awesome that fans can use to get and provide real-time feedback while watching the game. Since it uses Twitter, it’s easy for fans at the game, fans watching the game on TV, and fans listening at work to use. I like the way that Sheps described it in today’s episode; it’s similar to a “game thread,” but easier to use and more interactive. Big thanks to longtime listener neverbesocial for helping to plant this idea in my head awhile back.

To start interacting, just add the phrase #cubs to any Twitter message (“tweet”) and it’ll show up on the 140 Characters from Home Plate page.

Create a twitter account and try it out before or during tonight’s game!

Show schedule-wise, there will be a new episode of Cubscast on Tuesday morning that breaks down the Opener, so stay tuned for that. It will be our 500th episode and we’ll have a special guest along with the second part (download part I – mp3) of an interview we recently recorded with Len Kasper, the Cubs Play-By-Play Broadcaster. Len was extremely generous to come on the show right before the start of the season, and he had a lot of insightful and funny things to say, so check those out.

Lastly, thanks to Brad Spirrison for the nice mention of the new Twitter feature and Len Kasper interview in today’s Sun-Times.

Have a happy and safe Opening Day, and Go Cubs!