I don't care if I ever get back

We cheered the Cardinals to victory yesterday. My family was surprised that I didn't conform to normal habit and keep score of the game. Somehow, it seemed too much like schoolwork. I missed it, though. The nuances of the game are easier to read off of a scorecard than from my memory.

But perhaps it was just as well. The big story of this game wasn't very nuanced. And the scorecard isn't designed to handle fifteen batters scoring eleven runs in the first inning.

To give this post a library angle (although I've met a surprising number of library types who like baseball, so maybe baseball is on topic), The Joy of Keeping Score by Paul Dickson is a delightful addition to a summer reading list. For a quick introduction to scoring, try these tips from Major League Baseball.

Since I don't keep score very often, I usually make up a system on the fly, combining the instructions on the scorecard and my preference for drawing the baseball diamond as runners proceed around the base path. I reached my peak of scoring ability the summer before high school when I scored nearly every Cardinal game in a spiral bound notebook while listening to Jack Buck and Mike Shannon on the radio.     #

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