Observant, uh, observers may notice that the picture in my profile, both on this blog and Twitter, is my face obscured by a baseball scorecard. That shot was taken from the stands of the first ever Walkoff Walk HEIST, which was a scorekeeper’s dream: lots of action, late-inning madness, and plenty of people around to take care of the card while I went on beer and Schmitter’s runs. (The full version of the Phillies side of the card can be seen here.)
Sadly, I’m missing HEIST for the first time in four years this summer due to family obligations, but given that I’ve moved into an apartment two blocks from Nationals Park and have no desire to ever throw all my crap into boxes ever again, there’ll be plenty of baseball this summer. And plenty of baseball means, of course, plenty of scorekeeping.
Ken Goldstein's (Baseball Prospectus) scorecard from the bonkers 2011 World Series Game 6. (from Deadspin)
My (internet) friend Larry Granillo over at Wezen-Ball inspired me with a recent post about his scorecard. To understand why I love scorekeeping at ballgames, you need to understand that I have three different levels of engagement at sporting events:
- DISENGAGED, which is how I usually watch NBA games because they’re like being in a goddamn Pachinko machine, or televised golf, because it’s televised golf
- SEMI-ENGAGED, my default (and healthiest) position, where I’ll talk to people in a convincing simulation of human behavior but occasionally scream obscenities towards the playing field, or
- HYPER-ENGAGED, which I reserve for standing/singing/jumping games in Cameron or with the Screaming Eagles, where it’s best not to put your more valuable fingers too close to my mouth.
The problem with baseball is that it’s too easy to drift from semi-engaged to completely disengaged, and when you’re completely disengaged you should have just gone on a picnic. Or watched the game at home, where your fridge doesn’t demand eight dollars a beer.
Scorekeeping bridges the gap between paying attention and waiting for the scoreboard dot race to start. It’s like a meditative mantra, occupying your mind with semi-creative tedium. It forces you to notice the little things, like positional shifts and Dustin Pedroia. As a nice bonus, it enables you to keep a great memento of every game you’ve been to. You could accomplish the same thing with ice cream sundae helmets, but then your girlfriend will throw them away when she leaves you because you consumed 162 ice cream sundaes last year and now none of your jeans fit.
The rest of John Kruk didn't fit in the frame
I have a few rules about scorekeeping. I try not to let it distract me from conversation, and generally when I’m at the park with people outside my group of friends, I’ll leave the card at home to socialize more. I try to capture everything as best I can, but am not averse to the occasional Phil Rizzuto-inspired WW (for “wasn’t watching”.) If I get up for food or drinks, I hand the scorecard off to a friend, which is a fun game as you try to figure out who will still talk to you after you hand them paperwork at 9 PM on a Friday night.
Tools of the trade are important. You could score on a program, of course, assuming your home team gives them out for free. The Nats are kind enough to do so, but it’s a small, undetailed card. At a lot of parks, you’re paying for the privilege; at some, you’re even paying for a pencil. (The one thing I can’t stand about Durham Bulls games.) No, you need to come equipped.
Generally, what I look for in a scorecard is:
- Ample room in the boxes for notations (having a diamond in there is my personal preference, but it’s not necessary.)
- Room in the lineup for substitutions.
- Extra innings (12 is nice – remember, it’s not just the possibility of a 10th inning and beyond, it’s the possibility that a side bats around in an inning.)
- A good set of counting boxes (especially for pitchers.)
There are other luxuries you can find, like ump boxes and count markers, but most of these are just gilding the lily.
Thankfully, it’s easy to find a good one, courtesy The Magical Internet. The Baseball Scorecard keeps half-a-million types, and I have personally used their vertical version happily for the past seven years. I also have no complaints about Squaretender’s Perfect Scorecard, which has the added bonus of doing it all on one side of a sheet of paper. I’ve kept all my cards from the last ten years in a three-ring binder, putting the cards in page-sleeves. It’s sloppy, but it works well enough, plus there’s room in there for ballpark programs and ticket stubs.
If you want to step up to something a little more permanent, Amazon has a number of the options you probably remember from your youth in a dugout (or your beer-league team). These tend to be big and clunky, however, and suffer from the same consistency problem.
Instead, I recommend Eephus League, where Bethany Heck energized a bunch of baseball fans through Kickstarter and has created a wonderful product for OCD scorekeepers everywhere.
The double rainbow of scorebooks.
I just ordered three of these for the near future, as they are magnificent. Each game gets four pages to itself. It’s bound up beautifully, like a little basebally Moleskine, because let’s face it, baseball is the Sport of Hipsters. (Also, the cover is mustard-resistant.) They even come with stickers. STICKERS, PEOPLE. I plan on using the W and L stickers at work during contract review as a passive-aggressive way to give feedback. E-6, you moron, you just let that limitation of liability clause roll right through your legs, didn’t you?
And once you’ve learned how to score – which I’m not going to go into here, but let me Google it for you – all that’s left is developing your own personal style.
We can't all have Spudart's style, because Spudart is a hero.
Some suggestions, from my personal repertoire:
- Full lines on the diamond for hits; dots on the bases for walk, FCs, errors, steals, everything else.
- I put players’ uniform numbers in the corners near advanced bases to signify who advanced the runner, but then, I also arrange my socks by age.
- If you say “7″ for a fly to left field instead of “F7″, you’ll never want to tear your hair out when the left fielder catches that ball in foul territory.
- I use “DP 6-4-3″ instead of “6-4-3″ because double plays should pop on the page. They earned it, goshdarnit.
- Similarly, it’s often too hard to tell a filled-in diamond was a homerun, so I generally draw a line from the plate to where it left the yard.
- Score in ink, you wimp. I bet you do the Times crossword in pencil and drive with at least one hand on the wheel, too.
If you’ve gotten this far and you want more musings on the art of the scorecard, I wholeheartedly recommend wasting an afternoon at Squaretender, which has some fantastic examples of committed ‘keepers.
Scorekeeping is not a dying art; on the contrary, as baseball fans obsess harder over the stats, I think we’re going to see a renaissance in scorebook art. I’m not going to go get one tattooed on my back, but if you feel like showing your commitment, I recommend that as a good place to start.
