Greenbrier golfer Shafer is named All-American

Greenbrier High School senior golfer Cody Shafer has been named to the 2010 Rolex Junior All-American Team.

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Each year the best junior golfers in the country are honored by Rolex, based on their standings in the Polo National Golf Rankings.

Shafer vaulted to 33rd in the rankings based on his solid play this summer. He earned a top-10 finish in the Exide Technologies Junior Open, then followed that up with a win at the Burgett H. Mooney Jr. Rome Classic.

His impressive summer continued two weeks later with a runner-up finish in the Charles Howell III Junior Championship, played at West Lake Country Club in Columbia County.

Shafer and his Greenbrier teammates nearly won the Class AAAAA state title a year ago, and with a tremendous group of players returning, the Wolfpack should be primed for another state championship run this year in Class AAAA.

Greene has baseball playoff ties

Former Evans High baseball star Todd Greene certainly knows the teams playing in the Major League Baseball League Championship Series. He spent at least one season with three of the four remaining teams.

Greene played for the Yankees in 2001, serving as Jorge Posada's backup at catcher. The Yankees advanced to the World Series that year against Arizona, and Greene was involved in one of the signature moments for the sports this decade, catching the ceremonial first pitch from President George W. Bush at Yankee Stadium just a few weeks after the Sept. 11 tragedies. He also doubled off Randy Johnson in the series.

Greene spent the 2002 and 2003 seasons with the Texas Rangers, posting double digits in homers both seasons. While with Texas, he was a teammate of Alex Rodriguez.

He ended his career playing one season with San Francisco. As a veteran catcher who was considered to have an incredible baseball IQ, Greene was relied on to work with a lot of the young Giants pitchers at the time. He helped bring along Matt Cain and Jonathan Sanchez, who now fill the No. 2 and No. 3 spots in the Giants' rotation.

I spoke with him this week about the MLB postseason, and he was like a proud big brother when talking about some of the young players he worked closely with.

"It is great to see guys like Cain and Sanchez get a chance to play in the playoffs," he said. "They have matured into great pitchers, and it is fun to watch them perform on such a big stage."

He would not give me a hint as to who he is pulling for, but my guess is he is happy for the upstart Rangers and Giants and would not mind seeing them square off in the World Series.

Local teams featured

I was thrilled this summer when I was approached by Play-On Sports to broadcast high school football games for them. The company produces games for the GHSA Network and had worked out a deal to do games locally for Comcast.

The games are taped on Friday and aired the following Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. on Comcast Channel 4. The games run two more times later in the week and are available on Comcast On Demand.

This Tuesday, you can catch the huge match-up between Grovetown and Richmond Academy.

We will close out our regular season coverage with the big rivalry game between Evans and Lakeside.

Also available On Demand are North Augusta at Evans (Sept. 24) and Greenbrier at Lakeside (Oct. 1).