Archive for the ‘Announcements’ Category

UPDATE 2/18: Nominations are now closed. We’ll announce the winners on Monday Feb 25th’s episode!

As mentioned in today’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 2007. The aptly named “Best Cubs Website Awards” (or “The Strodes” for short) will be broadcast in a special episode on Monday February 25.

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

Best Cubs Blog – Multiple Author

Best Cubs Site - Overall - Non-Blog

Best Cubs Rumor Site

Best Cubs Player Site

Best Cubs Humor Site

Best Cubs Merchandise/Memorabilia/Clothing Site

Excellence in Diction – Best Original Cubs-Related Word or Phrase

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, non-Cubs related, 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.

To participate, simply nominate your favorite Cubs website(s) today in the comments on this post. Comments will be closed at the end of the day on Monday February 18.

Award winners will be decided upon by the three Cubscast hosts and winners will be announced on Monday February 25, 2008. Good luck!

As we mentioned on today’s show, Cubscast will not have a booth in the exhibit hall at this year’s Cubs Convention in Chicago, but Sheps and I will be attending and covering the convention, attempting to interview a few players, etc. on Friday and Saturday.

We also are looking forward to meeting up with any listeners that would like to join us on Saturday at 3:00 p.m. in the lobby restaurant/bar area near the corner of Michigan Ave and Balbo. Sheps will be autographing photos of his kidney stone, and we’ll be doing a few other fun things.

Here are a few sessions of note for this weekend’s Cubs Convention:

Friday, January 18
5:00-5:30 pm Opening Ceremonies

Saturday, January 19
9:00-10:00 am Meet Baseball Management
11:30 am-12:30 pm Lou and his Crew
1:30-2:30 pm Storytelling with Cubs Legends

Sunday, January 20
10:30-11:30 am Down on the Farm
10:00 am-1230 pm Baseball Hall of Fame Exhibit

For more information, visit the Cubscast message board and check out StevethePirate’s amazing rundown of what to expect at the convention if you’re attending for the first time, as well as the full schedule of sessions posted by Herby.

See you in Chicago this weekend!

As mentioned on today’s episode, we are inviting everyone out there to participate in a brand new Cubscast contest.

For the second year in a row Santa has asked us to help him determine which current or former Cubs players and personnel have been naughty or nice in 2007 and we need your help!

To enter, call the Cubscast voicemail box at 312-239-0179 and let us know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. Don’t forget to leave your first name and the city/state you’re calling from!

Contest ends Friday December 21st. Two first prize winners, chosen by the Cubscast hosts based on humor and originality, will be announced on our special upcoming holiday episode on Christmas Eve. Santa guarantees these prizes are cool…but hey, it’s hard to trust a guy that claims he sees elves everywhere.

Thanks for participating and good luck!

p.s. feel free to check out last year’s holiday episode — we played several great contest entries towards the end of the episode.

In honor of the Cubs’ first trip to the postseason since we started Cubscast, we wanted to give listeners everywhere a chance to do the talking for a change, and win a prize.

All you have to do to be eligible is give us a call anytime after any Cubs playoff game on the Cubscast Listener Hotline at 312-239-0179, and then tell us the following:

1. Your first name and where you’re calling from
2. If the Cubs won the game, who was the team’s MVP for the game and why?
   or
   If the Cubs lost the game, who was the team’s “goat” for the day and why?

Placing a call to the Cubscast Listener Hotline is just like calling your grandma in Indiana, standard long distance charges may apply if you live outside of Chicago, but there are, of course, no additional fees. Oh, but unlike your grandma, please feel free to call us anytime, day or night.

We plan on giving away a prize to one random caller who leaves us a message after each round of the playoffs. To find out if you won, just listen to the cast following the end of the NLDS, NLCS and dare we say it, World Series, and we’ll announce the winner.

We look forward to hearing from you and even playing some of your messages on the air. Good luck, and Go Cubs!

Today we’re introducing a new Plug Us feature on our website, and to kick it off we’ve created a brand new contest that we encourage everybody out there to participate in. First prize is an iPod nano and we also have additional prizes including an iPod shuffle!

Interested? Here’s how to enter:

1. Add any of the new banners from our new Plug Us page to your website, blog, or public MySpace profile page and send an e-mail to hosts (at) cubscast.com to let us know when it’s up.
2. Leave the Cubscast banner and link up for at least 10 consecutive days in September 2007 and you’ll be entered into a random drawing for a brand new iPod nano.

That’s it! Winner will be announced on Monday October 15, 2007. To sweeten the deal, we’ll mention sites that enter the contest on the show during the month of September. In addition, the site that drives the most traffic our way in September will win an iPod shuffle and a special mention on the show, and the site that drives the least traffic also wins a special mention on Cubscast.

Be sure to check out the Official Plug Us Contest Rules. We hope this is a fun way to show your support of our show and also have a chance to win some great prizes in the process. Good luck to everyone that participates!

UPDATE: We’re all looking forward to meeting you and talking some Cubs this Saturday. If you haven’t RSVP’ed, please do so by commenting on the original post below. See you at the Black Rock at 9:00! — Sheps, Lou, and Sneetch

As announced towards the end of Friday’s episode, Cubscast is throwing a listener party on Saturday August 18, and you’re invited!

Details:

Black Rock Bar
3614 N. Damen (Damen & Addison - a mile west of Wrigley field)
9:00 p.m. - ?
21+

We’ve got the entire back room to ourselves with a separate bar. There’s no cover charge to get in. We can guarantee that the first 50+ people who show up at the party will receive free drink tickets. Possibly more than that. As well as meeting the hosts and other listeners we’ll also have some fun stuff set up and some giveaways.

This is going to be a blast so we encourage everybody that can make it, whether you’re from Chicago or you’re from Texas, to come out! Shane from Australia is gonna be there. We think.

Please RSVP in the comments below. Should we call it the “One Night in August” Listener Party? Hmmm.

Just a quick note for everyone out there. We know that more people are listening to Cubscast now than ever have before, and because we don’t usually mention it on the show I thought I’d post a reminder that it’s easy to sign up to be notified whenever a new episode of Cubscast is released:

We release new episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday during the regular season (and the postseason!). Thanks to the good folks over at Feedburner for managing our e-mail notification service, and thanks to you for your continued support of the show. Go Cubs!