Nan Ryan knows the 36th annual Pepsi Little People's Golf Championships will have a bit of a different feel this year.

Monitoring the progress of this year's event, which is set for June 22-24 at five Quincy-area courses, from her Colorado home, Ryan can tell now the tournament is feeling the effects of the sagging economy.

"We're hoping to hit 400 (entries)," Ryan said earlier this week. "That's down from previous years."

As of Wednesday, only 252 youth golfers had signed up to play for the event. For a comparision, Ryan had 424 entries in by this time last year. With gas prices soaring last summer and a plethora of other junior events on the calendar, the LPGC was able to draw 648 golfers -- a drop of 213 from the previous year.

The event hasn't had less than 500 participants since 1992. It hasn't been under 400 since 1985. The LPGC record is 922, set in 2000.

Ryan is hopeful a number of foreign competitors show up to play in the event. A group of nine South African players are signed up. There are also golfers from Columbia, Canada, England and Germany scheduled to play as well as group from Mexico. Of course, if this swine flu scare grows into a pandemic, who knows if those players will be able to travel.

But Ryan's biggest surprise is that no players from Quincy have signed up to participate yet.

"But we never have as many Quincy kids as I think we should have," she said.

There is an extra draw for the locals to get involved in this year's LPGC. Even if they don't want to participate in the tournament, the Pepsi International Mixed Team Events are open to all junior golfers. Since the events started in 2005, they were only open to LPGC participants.

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St. Louis Cardinals fans who watch their favorite team on Comcast cable system in Quincy will have to do without 16 more games this season. For the third straight year, the local cable system will be forced to blackout some Cardinals games.

And if you happen to be Milwaukee Brewers fan, you're out of luck, too. Seven Cardinals-Brewers games are part of the blackouts. After the Cardinals' world championship season in 2006, Fox Sports Midwest decided to pick up more Cardinals games. It passed some of those costs on to their cable and satellite providers. Many of those companies reached deals to broadcast the expanded schedule. Comcast was one of those who didn't.

I wrote about this on my blog -- DOBservations -- earlier this month at www.whig.com/dob. Some people said they were going to ditch Comcast for the dish.

Then, there was this from "marbletop," who wrote, "listen to it on the radio, use your imagination."

Thankfully, every Cardinals game can be heard on WGEM NewsTalk 105.

WGEM has also stepped up again to pick up games broadcast by the Cardinals Television Network. The majority of these games will be on CGEM (WGEM 10.3 digitial). Because of some other committments, the station has been forced to move some of those games to its CW affiliate (WGEM 10.2 digital). Look at the schedule on this page for games and which station to look for.

-- dobrien@whig.com/221-3365