Cedar Rapids Kernels, Quad Cities River Bandits finally playing

CEDAR RAPIDS - It’s 80 miles between Cedar Rapids and Davenport.

All four-lane driving. Takes about an hour and 10 minutes to travel, maybe a couple less if you really hoof it.

Which makes it nutso that it took 75 games into the Midwest League season for the Cedar Rapids Kernels and Quad Cities River Bandits to play baseball against each other.

CR and QC met Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night at Modern Woodmen Park along the Mississippi River. They played Friday night and will play against Saturday night and Sunday afternoon at Veterans Memorial Stadium.

“I don’t know if it’s weird. I think just from a proximity standpoint, it’s different,” said Kernels Manager Brian Meyer. “However the schedules work out, we don’t control who we play or when we play them or anything. It’s just kind of the way the schedule shook out this year.”

This is the latest into a season that Cedar Rapids and Quad Cities played each other for the first time since CR joined the Midwest League in 1962. Kernels play-by-play broadcaster Calvin Christoforo did that research recently.

The Midwest League always used to hire a guy to do its schedule annually. What a task that had to be, especially before computers became prevalent and with all the requests from clubs to be home on certain dates.

But since Major League Baseball took over operations of the minor leagues in 2021, schedules have been made via committee. That committee consists of folks from MLB, selected general managers in the MWL and player development people from MLB clubs.

In a sense, it’s simpler. With only a couple of exceptions, including this week, all series are of the six-game variety, with games being played Tuesday through Sunday.

Every Monday is an off day.

But it can lead to anomalies like what you are seeing with Cedar Rapids and Quad Cities. The teams did not play at all the entire first half, which was not an insignificant thing since they finished first and second in the Western Division.

The Kernels won the first-half championship by a game.

“It is weird,” said Quad Cities second baseman Sam Kulasingam. “We have a really good ballclub here, they’ve got a good ballclub. We play them a lot in the second half, the opposite of what we’ve done so far. We’ve got the home and home here, they’ll come to our place again and we’ll come back here at some point. So, you know, we’ll get to play them a lot. They’re a good team, we’re a good team, so it’ll be fun how this series pans out ...”

The teams have split their first four games, including CR’s 6-3 Fourth of July win Friday night before over 5,300 folks at Veterans Memorial Stadium. Quad Cities has the early second-half lead in the division, so it would be no surprise if these clubs end up opposing each other in Midwest League playoffs in September.

Quad Cities has a 47-32 overall record to Cedar Rapids’ 45-34. They have two more regular-season series scheduled: August 12-17 in Cedar Rapids and September 2-7 in Davenport.

“It’s always good to play good competition,” Meyer said. “I think you get it every night. Whether teams are winning or losing, you always get that competition. But the big thing we’re trying to focus on, which we’ve done from the beginning of the year, is focusing on ourselves. Just playing the game the right way: throwing strikes, moving runners, playing solid defense.

“Those are the things that we can control, not who our opponent is ... That’s the thing about this game. You come to the ballpark every day 0-0, and anybody can beat anybody on that given day. That’s whether it’s little league baseball or the big leagues.”

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