Tag: Baseball

The Joy of Keeping Score

First of all, go find a copy of Paul Dickson’s “The Joy of Keeping Score” and read it. It’s a fun book, even if you never keep score at a game. However, you really should keep score. Here’s my journey.

I got a new phone recently and when I was cleaning all the files off my old phone, I found my scoresheets (well, spreadsheets) from a number of last year’s AirHogs games. I realized it’s time to start practicing on my scoring, because baseball season is upon us.

While some people complain that baseball is too slow (this is a bad thing?), I’ve found the best way to keep my head in the game is to keep score. (It also lessens the cross-talk from the Spousal Unit.) However, since I didn’t grow up in the 1950s, this was not as simple to learn  as one would think – as in, my Dad did not just teach me as a part of growing up while we were going to baseball games. Luckily, unlike the 1950s, we have the Internet to find information on anything. For example, here is the official MLB page for keeping score. There is a very useful site with sample scorecards. David Cortesi has a good writeup on Project Scoresheet (RIP.) Google will lead you to hundreds of other examples. If you can find a sporting goods store, they will have scorecards.

Being a geek, I found any number of computer programs to keep score, but really didn’t think taking a laptop to games was a very good idea. Plus, I didn’t relish the thought of tossing an extension cord into the dugout and asking one of the players to plug me in when the battery ran low.

While being a secretive baseball geek, I really didn’t relish the thought of having scoresheets all over the top of the dugout, while trying to keep score the old fashioned way – on paper.

So, I was left with the only computer with batteries that would (probably) last an entire game – my phone. There was some software for WindowsMobile but I didn’t really like any of it.

Then, an epiphany. What is a scoresheet? It’s rows and columns. What is on a computer with rows and columns? A spreadsheet.

The reality is that you can keep score pretty much any way you want – you just need to find a system and stick with it. After all the research I did, and all the systems I tried to learn, one day at QTP, I decided to just do it. So, I opened up a spreadsheet on my phone and started keeping score.

It’s actually pretty easy. Here’s the first inning of the AirHogs vs the Diablos, August 17, 2010.  (The AirHogs lost the game.)

Diablos
1
23/CF Vincent (Schmidt)Ks
20/2B Santana 1B
8/SS Ponce (CS 20)Ks
30/DH Nichols
10/1B Smith
33/3B Reininger
29/2B Hulett
24/LF Reynoso
14/C Deleo
AirHogs
1
4/CF Perry (Ellis)BB
2/2B Gray (SB 4 2B E2 4 3B) 1B (4 RBI)
7/SS Espinosa (SB 2 2B E2 2 3B) BB
44/3B/C Porter pf5
28/1B/3B Banks BB
16/DH Hollimon 1B (2 RBI 7 RBI 28 2B)
27/LF/1B Stokes (CS 16)
13/RF Garza
8/C Jordan
17/LF Incaviglia

Daniel Schmidt on the mound for the AirHogs. He struck out the first batter (swinging.) He then gave up a single to Santana, who was caught stealing. He struck out Ponce to end the inning. (Good job, Daniel!)

AirHogs are up against Ellis. Robert Perry walked. Antoin Gray batted second. Perry stole second, and went to third on an error from the catcher. Gray singled to bring him home. 1-0 AirHogs. David Espinosa batted third. Gray stole second and advanced to third on another error. Espinosa walked. Greg Porter popped out foul to the third baseman. Ernie Banks walked. Mike Hollimon singled in two runs and moved Banks to second. 3-0 AirHogs. He then got caught stealing to end the inning.

That’s my system. It’s not as elegant as some, it’s probably too wordy (symboly?), but it works for me – as in, I haven’t looked at that spreadsheet since the night of the game, but I can reconstruct it now.

The reason I need to get warmed up is because I need to go back through the scoresheets from last year and see if my abbreviations were consistent. I have a feeling they varied from time to time.

Still, it’s nice to be able to put a game back together again after seven months.

The other major advantage of having a scorecard is that you can decide arguments after the game. “How many people did Daniel strike out last night?” Look at the spreadsheet. Count the “K”s. “Four.” Done.

So, if you’re at the ballpark this summer, keep score. It’s a great way to stay connected to the action, and it gives you a permanent record of the game.

Also, remember one critical symbol that’s not in any scorecard – “WW”. As Paul Dickson mentions in “The Joy of Keeping Score”, “WW” was Hall of Famer Phil Rizzuto’s notation for “Wasn’t Watching.”  You have to go get beer sometime.

Diablos
1
23/CF Vincent (Schmidt)Ks
20/2B Santana 1B
8/SS Ponce (CS 20)Ks
30/DH Nichols
10/1B Smith
33/3B Reininger
29/2B Hulett
24/LF Reynoso
14/C Deleo
AirHogs
1
4/CF Perry (Ellis)BB
2/2B Gray (SB 4 2B E2 4 3B) 1B (4 RBI)
7/SS Espinosa (SB 2 2B E2 2 3B) BB
44/3B/C Porter pf5
28/1B/3B Banks BB
16/DH Hollimon 1B (2 RBI 7 RBI 28 2B)
27/LF/1B Stokes (CS 16)
13/RF Garza
8/C Jordan
17/LF Incaviglia

Don’t leave! It’s not over!

Why do people leave sporting events so early?

There must have been a lot of people that have never seen a baseball game at QuickTrip Park this evening. I say this because in the ninth inning, with the score tied at zero, people began leaving. WTF?

So, to all the newbies – football, hockey and basketball end on a timer. Soccer ends on a timer, and then the referee adds a random amount of time for no apparent reason. Baseball games end when someone wins.

The AirHogs lost in eleven innings this evening, 3-1. After a stellar performance from the starter, the closer gave up one run in the tenth which the ‘Hogs matched, but then got torched for two in the eleventh and the offense couldn’t match them. So it goes.

Here’s the strange part – a lot of people missed it. Sure, the home team lost, but it was a really good game, and those spectators threw away the chance to see about a half-hour’s worth. It’s free! Extra innings are included in the price of your ticket!

I almost (“almost”) understand people leaving if their team is comfortably ahead (or desperately behind), but as Ft Worth fans discovered earlier this month, an eight-run lead in the seventh doesn’t guarantee a victory. (Pensacola went into the bottom of the seventh down 10-2 and won the game 11-10. Ouch.) So, if the fans who called it an early night would have stayed, maybe the Cats would have won. What if your cheers were the missing ingredient?

I understand leaving work early – it will still be there tomorrow. I understand leaving Church early – you’re just going to hear why you’re going to Hell (again.) Ball games? You never know what will happen. Stick it out until the end. Unless you have screaming children who bore easily. Then, feel free to leave after the National Anthem.

Fighting Football

Well, the AirHogs swept the hated Ft Worth Cats this weekend, the Rangers are still heading for the playoffs, the Yankees are fighting the Red Sox, but none of that matters, because ….

The Cowboys third-string team just beat the Bengals third-string team in a game that is completely meaningless.

I hate being a baseball fan when football begins. In Texas, it never ends, so it’s even more difficult.

Superstition

To shave or not to shave – that is the question.

Superstition plays a great part in baseball, although I’ve only seen one great example this season – other than no pitchers actually stepping on the base line while going to and from the mound.

One of the AirHogs staff noticed that Pete Incaviglia and one of the fans from the Booster Club both had handlebar mustaches. Since they are always looking for ideas for promotions, when Pete suggested Mustache Monday, it seemed a natural. So, a date three weeks or so from that night was chosen. I started growing a mustache, just to fit in. Pete swore he could keep the mustache that long. The promotion was announced – cheap tickets for anyone with a mustache. We even donated a Carstache for a prize on behalf of Sparky’s Pals. (Sadly, I don’t think the winner claimed the prize.)

Mustache Monday Eve (the Sunday before), Pete’s mustache was gone. Why? “Gotta shake things up. Change our luck.” For some reason, this made perfect sense to me. It’s much easier to shave than to change the entire pitching staff overnight, for example. (Actually, given the trading activity this season, this may not be true.) My wife was still amazed that Pete would shave the day before the game named for his specific facial hair. However, changing luck outranks a promotion – especially when you’re the manager and you get into the park free, anyway.

So, now that the team’s slumping, Pete’s mustache is coming back and mine is still around, I’m starting to think maybe it’s me. It may be time to shave.  We’ll see.

Whatever happened to what’s his name?

Tracking Roster Churn in the Minors

Tracking the roster changes on an American Association team like the AirHogs can be an interesting (and challenging) task. My wife and I started going to games their first year (once in a while) and got season tickets the next. So, last year we were paying more attention to the team and its members, because we were seeing them more often. After we joined the Booster Club, and we’re paying a lot of attention, since we’ve actually met most of the players.

I tend to obsess about the roster because I keep a database of the players on the AirHogs Boosters Mobile site. The goal of this originally was to be able to identify player jersey numbers since the names were left off the jerseys this year. (As a side note, not having names is probably a reasonable idea – it’s not an ego thing, it’s actually a cost issue. As players joined and left last year, the newer players didn’t have names on their jerseys, since it was expensive to make a new, named jersey. One advantage – you could tell the players with tenure, since they had names. The disadvantage? You still needed a scorecard to figure out the “new guys.”)

I used to just watch the transactions page at the league website, but it’s not real-time. (It’s not even close.) This year, we noticed that if you looked at the team’s roster page on the team website and then clicked “Transactions”, you got updates more quickly, but it’s still not completely accurate. The roster itself seems to be close to real-time, so people may come and go – if you don’t have a copy of the previous roster (or a good memory), you may never notice the difference.

There’s a couple of issues we’ve hit in spite of all this new-found knowledge – one, the reality seems to be that even with the hard limit of 22 players on the roster, there is some leeway on when people actually count against the limit – as in, we’ve seen players in games who are “officially” not on the team yet. (The current AirHogs roster has 20 players, and I really find it difficult to believe a team wouldn’t be at the limit all year.) The other is that apparently if a player is waived (not released, not traded), he won’t show up in transactions at all unless he’s picked up by another team.

All this means is that it’s very difficult to actually find out who is on the team without just checking the box scores every night, and waiting for the league site to update to find out who the new guy is. (The other option is to actually go to the games!)

A compounding factor – The goal of every player in the minors is not necessarily to win the championship, it’s to get moved to a higher league – from independent ball to affiliated, and then up the chain to the “show.”  A minor league manager’s goal (as one has told me) is to build an environment where that will happen.

So, if you’re a minor league fan, you have to remember that there will be much more “churn” than in other leagues. You may not notice it as a casual fan, but if you actually start following a team, you’re going to notice it a lot. As there is no trade deadline, it will never end.