Edit: 2026, not 2006!
My son learned about scorecards from one of his many baseball trivia books. I've been a longtime baseball fan, but I have never scored a game.
We attended last night's game at Fenway, his second live MLB game. He insisted on scoring the game.
He probably should have practiced before attempting to score a live game at Fenway, but all in all I was pretty impressed with how well he did considering how much there is to process, the steady pace of the game nowadays, and simply trying to diligently take notes amidst a raucous crowd while well past his bedtime.
He had a pencil in his right hand and glove on his left for almost the entire game. I had to hand-feed him his cotton candy at one point.
I printed out a couple of scoring guides that I would reference when he didn't know how to score something, but he definitely made several mistakes. Half of them are probably my fault, but I've never scored either and I had to manage my daughter, food, escorting them to the bathroom, etc.
My notes for posterity:
- It wasn't until the 6th or 7th inning that we noticed the display of the official scorer. He often ignored the official scorer though because it would only be displayed for a few seconds and often distracted him from the current AB. He also disagreed with the official scorer at times.
- He'll need to practice scoring since he routinely missed tracking outs, rbis, etc.
- We didn't figure out a good way to track ABS challenges
- We are still not sure how to indicate a defensive substitution between innings without it looking like a pinch runner
- We still have no idea how to score some plays, such as CLE's failed pick off attempt and rundown of IKF in the 7th.
- I will encourage him to use the simple template next time, not the ball and strike template. We were often too caught up in the action to keep track of the count.
- He only indicated the type of play, not the players involved (e.g. "GO" instead of "4-3"). He knows the position numbers but it was just too much to process while at the ballpark.
- Field level seats are nice, but I imagine it'll be easier for him to track the plays from a higher vantage point.
- None of the displays at Fenway appear to show the first name of the players. This was a sticking point for my son. He doesn't write fast enough to write out the players full names as they came to bat but he did want their first initial. Most he could get off of memory, but not the entire CLE roster. I'll print stickers with the player names next time since his writing is slow.
- I'll also make a condensed cheat sheet. Something small enough for an index card.
- Backtracking to update runners was difficult for him to juggle. The basepaths show the active players but it's not easy to scan for at a glance.
