Score Keeping

By Scott Kendrick:

With high-tech scoreboards in professional baseball, score-keeping could become a lost art. But look around at the next game you attend, and there’s likely to be somebody who’s keeping track with a pencil and paper, a tradition that extends back to the early days of the game.

It looks complicated, but it’s not calculus, and if you’re scoring the game for fun, you might not need every single detail. If you’re learning to score so you can serve a team as an official scorekeeper, you need to learn the correct way to keep score with a scorebook or scorecard.

The point of the scorecard is to create an accurate record of the game. A person reading a scorecard should be able to recreate the game from beginning to end, just by looking at symbols, letters, and numbers.

If you’re an official scorer, you buy a scorebook at a sporting goods store or online. For a free, loose-leaf approach, look for websites with downloadable free samples.

There are as many score sheets and formats as there are scorekeepers, and no way is truly the correct way. What your use is and your personal preferences determine how you keep score. As long as it’s accurate, it’s fine.

An important tip. Always use a pencil. No matter if you’re doing this for the first time or have 50 years’ experience, you will need to use an eraser from time to time.