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Season Opens for River Bandits and Midwest League

waiting for the new season to start
WVIK News
waiting for the new season to start

Despite the cold and wet weather, the new season opens Friday night for the Midwest League and the Quad Cities River Bandits. They'll play three games at South Bend, through Sunday, then play their first home game on Tuesday against Cedar Rapids.

new manager Brooks Conrad talking with WQAD-tv's Matt Randazzo
WVIK News
new manager Brooks Conrad talking with WQAD-tv's Matt Randazzo

This will be the first year with the Quad Cities for Manager Brooks Conrad, but it'll be his fourth year coaching for the Kansas City Royals organization.

"In my mind, I think that it's my job to help them develop as young men and human beings first and foremost. The baseball aspect kind of takes care of itself, I'm more interested in helping them grow internally, as a man and as a person, and then develop them as players will come as well."

Twenty years ago, Conrad came to the Quad Cities as a player for Battle Creek, a former member of the Midwest League.

The River Bandits' opening day roster includes players from at least eleven states, plus Cuba, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Australia. Fifteen of the 30 played for the Quad Cities last season.

A native of Detroit, Herb Trix began his radio career as a country-western disc jockey in Roswell, New Mexico (“KRSY, your superkicker in the Pecos Valley”), in 1978. After a stint at an oldies station in Topeka, Kansas (imagine getting paid to play “Louie Louie” and “Great Balls of Fire”), he wormed his way into news, first in Topeka, and then in Freeport Illinois. While a graduate student in the Public Affairs Reporting Program at the University of Illinois at Springfield (then known as Sangamon State University), he got his first taste of public radio, covering Illinois state government for WUIS. Here in the Quad Cities, Herb worked for WHBF Radio before coming to WVIK in 1987. Herb also produces the weekly public affairs feature Midwest Week – covering the news behind the news by interviewing reporters about the stories they cover.