I did something last night I had not done in years, but it was just as rewarding and satisfying as I remembered it being. I kept score while I watched the Cubs and Giants, which is something I don't think I have done for a game since Beth was born.
While I've known how to do the scorebook since little league,* it never occurred for me to do it for a Major League game until college. This might require a little bit of background to explain. *I don't know what percentage of little leaguers know how to do that, but I'd imagine it's fairly high. Even so, being the coach's kid probably also helped. Back during my era of Wabash,* every freshman had to go through a class called a tutorial. These classes weren't "serious academia" subjects, but instead just something professors had a passion for and to give freshman an idea of how to adjust to college-level work given a subject they would be interested in. When I was admitted to Wabash, I got a blue card with a list of all the available choices, and I was asked to rank my top three. I know I put baseball as number one, video games as number two (which was the tutorial my buddy Nelson was in), and I do not remember my third choice or any of the rest of the card. That was back in 2004, so it has been a bit. *And very possibly still now, though I haven't gone out and confirmed this. Anyway. As you might have guessed, I did get into the baseball class with Dr. Butler. We were promised a trip to Wrigley as part of the class, but those tickets proved to be too difficult to get, so we had to settle for Cincinnati. That still worked out beautifully. I think by the time Andrew took the same course two years later, Cincinnati had become the default trip. If I remember right, their class acted a fool enough to land themselves on the Jumbotron. I'm getting off track again. One of the assignments in that class was to pick any game going on that night, keep score during the game, and then write a game story about it. I don't remember if we actually had to turn in our scorecards or not. I would imagine Dr. Butler probably required it. I love her to death, but she was tough. As tough as you would imagine the first tenured female professor at an all-male college would be. I somehow settled on the Braves playing the Expos in Montreal. I'm guessing I picked that game just from ease of having the Braves on TBS at the time. The Cubs probably had a day game I couldn't make work. I also don't know why that sticks in my memory so clearly. Paul Byrd pitched a great game that night and was the star of my story. The TBS broadcast picked up some Braves players having some fun with the fact that nobody ever went to Expos games, at least not at the end. I don't remember who said it, but somebody in the Braves dugout said "Wait, did you hear that? Somebody just dropped their popcorn up in the thirteenth row!" Some sleuthing on Baseball Reference tells me it must have been September 3rd, 2004. Reported attendance was under 9,000. For reference, Olympic Stadium has over 55,000 permanent seats. What I found doing this was it really did improve my attention to the game. The trends of the game really were much clearer, and it made the commercial breaks go by much more quickly. So, it ended up being something I did a bit off and on at first before becoming a regular thing I did during games for a long stretch. Having Beth probably killed that off. It became difficult to watch too many games at that point, and even the ones I was watching, my attention was many times a bit split. But now she's a bit older and much more independent than she used to be, so I think I can start getting back into the habit. I think another reason I like keeping score with baseball is just that the cards themselves are a thing of beauty to me, more than any other similar type scorekeeping. Every sheet feels a bit like a work of art to me. I don't think I'm alone in that, either. I remember a Uni-Watch interview with Bethany Heck, who at the time was developing her Eephus League site. She back then was developing an "artsy" scorebook. That was eight years ago, and you can still get that product today: The Halfliner. It really is a thing a beauty, and I probably would have already invested in several if her scoresheet included boxes for the count. If I remember right, she thought/thinks it makes things too cluttered. So, I just stick to my printouts. While trying to track down that article, I learned there is an even bigger community out there who appreciates the beauty of keeping score. A whole book as been written about it. There are so many appreciative articles which also want to remind you scorekeeping is a lost art. That last link also wraps back around to Bethany Heck. I think she hit a homer with that project. I've posted my scorecards before, so I'm sure you're all familiar with my style. I like to think it's pretty straight-forward and easy to follow. The most notable thing here is that this was the first time maybe ever I'd kept score watching a game through an antenna, rather than satellite. Using a paid service like cable, satellite, or streaming, you have the ability to pause the action and make whatever notation feels appropriate. Or, there is the chance to run to the bathroom and not miss a thing. When you're going over the air, there is no such luck. In my haste to keep up with the broadcast, you'll see my first attempt to spell Hunter Wendelstedt did not go super well, and my writing careened a bit trying to get down Vic Carapazza. I was a bit rusty trying to get down Mike Yastrzemski, too. I also put the H in the wrong place for Steve Cishek, which was also a product of haste, but one that I really should have known better regardless. I think the only notable difference between my scoring and the official scoring is I gave Robel Garcia the benefit of the doubt on his bunt, crediting him with a sacrifice. It seemed like a just reward after putting a ball firmly into McCovey Cove. Although maybe that's exactly why the scorer in San Francisco wasn't feeling as charitable. I didn't realize I had quite this much to say on the topic. All of this to say: if you are so inclined to keep score during a baseball game, or are willing to learn, I really can't recommend it enough. I've found it difficult to do at the stadium itself, but I feel like it works wonderfully when watching from home. Comments are closed.
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