What's with the Carrot Leage in baseball today

[austin_dern]

One thing I didn't do at the baseball game was keep a scorecard. Scorecards are a great baseball tradition, and let fans combine their love of the game with their love of double-entry bookkeeping. An experienced scorecard reader can reconstruct pitch-by-pitch an entire game from 128 years ago by glancing at the scorecard, taking 127 years to work on it, and reading how the newspaper reported the game. So for a while I tried.

A printed scorecard blank can be had for under four dollars with a state license. At the top I write the names of the teams, the date, the weather conditions, my name in case I forget, my homeroom section, and my name again to even out the columns.

I write the first batter's name (Charlie Reilley), discovering too late this column is too narrow, and in the next boxes write his number from his shirt and his number from his position, which I use interchangeably after forgetting which way I started. For each at-bat there's a little diamond to record the action, and after admiring these rows I realize he already struck out. I write a K in the slot for the position number.

For the second batter I write the first five letters of what I thought his name was, because I copied from one of the advertising screens by mistake; it should have been Dan Brouthers. He makes a base hit; I darken the line from the little home plate to first base. This isn't dark enough, so I run your pen over the line a few times until the pen's tip pokes gently through the paper.

Now I remember I should have brought a better writing surface, like I resolved to do last time. While attempting to arrange several napkins as a platform, something happens on first which I don't look up quick enough to see, but as the runner's leaving the field I write it down as a Fielder's Choice because I like the name and have never met anyone who knew what exactly constitutes one.

For the third batter I listen closely and write his first name (Thorny), which the stadium echo makes me think is his last name (Hawkes) too. It's odd to have a name like Thorny Thorny, but if he's come to peace with it who am I to argue? The pitch fouls off and goes into the stands where a young child screams and covers his head. This does not need my scoring, so I write 'X'. Thorny Thorny Thorny is hit by the next pitch, so I draw in the line from home to first and can't figure what to write before missing the fourth batter's name (Herm Doscher).

Filling in ``Louie'' because the organist played ``Louie, Louie (We Gotta Go)'' I watch as the next ball is a nice grounder that makes shortstop, second base, center field, and right field all converge; one of them grabs it and tosses to first, where the runner is tagged out, but the previous guy makes it to second.

By my calculations this ought to end the inning, but all the outfielders are staying in the outfield. They do seem to be reasonably professional and so I trust they probably know what they're doing. On the third guy's diamond I draw a line from first to second, and jot down the fourth guy's jersey number, while under the fourth guy's I draw a circle around position number 9, who had nothing to do with whatever the play was. The next batter (Ed Caskin, for which I write down 'Fred Pfeffer' inexplicably) hits a fly to center field, which I don't write down because I was trying to figure exactly where the card went wrong.

This ends the half of the inning, and I take the moment to accidentally drop the scorecard in the puddle of the soda I kicked over without realizing. And while I can take out a fresh scorecard with a sense of renewed optimism, it's also easy to let the newspaper people write up the game and gaze in wonder at how they do it.

Trivia: When the patent on the Phillips screw and screwdriver expired in the mid-1960s there were more than 160 United States and 80 foreign licensees. Source: One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw, Witold Rybczynski.

Currently Reading: Sweet and Low: A Family Story, Rich Cohen.

Comments

[patchoblack.livejournal.com]

Bugs: 96
Gorrilas: 95

Source: Baseball Bugs

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It's a real pitchers' duel.