#113---CLE @ LAA, 7/23/2008

This game was a slugfest, with the teams trading multi-run innings until Los Angeles’ five in the fifth gave them a 10-6 cushion, and pairs in the sixth and seventh allowed them to take a 14-7 lead. Down 14-10 going into the ninth, David Dellucci’s two-out RBI double off Jose Arredondo made it a save situation, which allowed Francisco Rodriguez to record the 42nd of his record 62 saves.


While any 14-11 game is bound to have plenty of offensive standouts, what makes this one interesting is how many of the big hitters were very marginal players. Ryan Garko drove in four of Cleveland’s runs, while Casey Kotchman went 5-5. But both pale in comparison to Jeff Mathis going 4-5 with a grand slam and a two-run double.

#112---CHN @ CIN, 4/4/2007

There’s not a whole lot that stands out looking at this scoresheet. Bronson Arroyo dropped down a bunt hit, Edwin Encarnacion reached on catcher’s interference, and Jared Burton made his major league debut, walking the only three batters he faced and throwing a wild pitch for good measure.

#111---SEA @ CLE, 4/21/2016

Sometimes I find myself somewhere with a ballgame on the radio and really want to keep score, but I didn’t expect to have that opportunity and don’t have a scoresheet handy. Or I’m not sure if I’ll be able to take in the whole game and don’t want to “waste” a pre-printed sheet on the game (because that $0.09 printing cost is inhibitive). In such cases, improvisation is an option if there is paper available.

This is one such example. I simply took a standard 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper and folded it in half (vertically), using one side for the visitors innings and the other side for home. Unfortunately, this sheet really reveals why I’m an analyst/writer and not an artist, as I found that I was using way too much space for each inning and had to shrink down. I also shouldn’t have used diamonds, which inherently involve more art than my usual approach.


I decided during the game that I would make a simple pre-printed form to avoid any such future problems…and then ended up being able to test it right away as the game went to extra innings. Seattle had a built a lead off shaky pitching from Cody Anderson and Trevor Bauer, but Cleveland chipped away, with the big blows a three run homer from Rajai Davis to open the scoring and a two out, two run pinch hit homer to tie it in the eighth from Mike Napoli. But in the tenth, Robinson Cano hit a three run blast off Cody Allen and Seattle won 10-7. Note that I tracked the running tally for each team by writing the number of the run inside each diamond; usually when I use diamonds, I just use a dot for a run scored, but knew I wouldn’t have a lot of space for summary stats on this scoresheet.

#110---CLE @ DET, 4/14/2006

This was a fairly uneventful early season game, with Kenny Rogers shutting down the Indians backed by two homers from Brandon Inge. Within a month or so it would become apparent that the AL Central might not play out as expected, with defending World Series winner Chicago and late-charging Cleveland looking up at Detroit. The Tigers would lead the division much of the summer before settling for the wildcard at the hands of Minnesota. I suppose this game was an early season, small sample warning that things were not what they appeared.

#109---CLE @ LAA, 5/11/2005

My guess is that I started watching this game in-progress, and thus didn’t want to waste one of my regular scoresheets on it. It was also scored in pen, which as you can see is not something that I personally recommend.


Cleveland scored nine runs and hit three homers,  but all of them were solo shots, so there was plenty of other offense, particularly from Coco Crisp who was three for four with two doubles, a walk, and a steal (although he was also caught stealing). I do not remember Jake Woods, who finished the game for the Angels. He pitched 162 innings, mostly in relief, for LAA and SEA between 2005-2008.

#108---DET @ CLE, 4/19/2004

Jeff D’Amico did not have a good day.

First Omar Vizquel booted a Fernando Vina grounder to start the game. Then the next five Detroit batters reached through walks or hits, plating four runs and leaving runners at first and second with nobody out. D’Amico threw a strike to Craig Monroe, and there was a rain delay for 65 minutes. While D’Amico couldn’t have been long for the game sans precipitation, afterwards Jake Westbook came in and retired the side in order.

In the bottom of the first, Ronnie Belliard led off with a double. Then Omar Vizquel bunted him to third, down 4-0. Vizquel would often attempt to bunt for hits, which I can only hope is what was going on, but he was credited with a sacrifice.

Then Westbrook retired the side in order in the second. And the third. And the fourth. And the fifth. And the sixth. And the seventh. Sportswriters must have been scrambling to relate Jeff D’Amico to Babe Ruth and Jake Westbrook to Ernie Shore. Meanwhile, the Indians had managed to tie the game at four off Nate Robertson and Jamie Walker.


Alas, Westbrook’s perfect relief appearance was cut short at seven innings, as he was likely not stretched out enough. But Westbrook would pitch a complete game in his next outing and would never again work out of the bullpen for the Indians. Rafael Betancourt retired Vina to make it 22 in a row, but two singles and a Rondell White homer followed and he was knocked from the game. Scott Stewart, who is listed below in “Road Pitchers” in a terrible scorer’s error, came on and gave up three more runs of his own. David Lee (David Lee! Scott Stewart!) pitched the ninth, and despite Westbrook’s brilliance, the first and eighth innings gave Detroit a deceptively large margin at 10-4.

#107---KC @ CLE, 4/11/2003

Eleven years before they finally made the playoffs again, the Royals had a bit of an uprising in 2003 under Tony Pena. They would wind up 83-79, thanks largely to a 9-0 start. This was #8 as they edged the Indians 1-0.

Looking at the names in the Royals lineup, it does seem remarkable that they even managed a .500 campaign…Dee Brown, Desi Relaford, Angel Berroa (Rookie of the Year!), starting pitcher Runelvys Hernandez. In this game, they managed only four hits, scoring in the fifth with a walk, groundout, and single. Meanwhile, the Indians had eight hits, two of which were doubles, but failed to get a runner to third base the entire night. Leading off the ninth, Shane Spencer doubled and tried to become the first, but was cut down by Dee Brown at third. From there, Mike MacDougal needed just three pitches to retire Bill Selby and Travis Hafner to close it out.

Note the “N/A” for second base umpire; I’m not sure what the circumstances were, but the Baseball-Reference box score confirms that only three arbitrators worked this game.

#106---TEX @ CLE, 5/4/2002

Until I started writing this up, I had completely forgotten that Eddie Perez played for the Indians in 2002 (which was for the best as he had a 46 OPS+ in 125 PA). The 2002 Indians were the first bad baseball team I ever watched/listened to/followed on a daily basis, as my baseball fandom was sparked by the opening of Jacobs Field and corresponding Indians contention in 1994. The 2002 Indians went 74-88, not dreadful (especially by the standards of the bad Cleveland teams of the previous generation) but not exactly exciting either. So you get fun stuff like Eddie Perez and Brady Anderson batting sixth and Jolbert Cabrera in the lineup.

The Indians actually finished two games ahead of the Rangers, in year two of A-Rod’s massive contract. Texas mustered just five hits in this game, two by Rodriguez, one by Michael Young, one by Carl Everett, and one by some guy named Murray. I had no idea who he was until I checked Baseball-Reference to see that it was Calvin Murray (“besting” Perez with a 30 OPS+ over 86 PA).

Bartolo Colon was the brightest star for the Indians and would soon bring a bounty in trade; it is now, just fourteen years later, nearly inconceivable that such a pitcher in that circumstance would be allowed to make 125 pitches. Colon fanned eight and walked one, but had to work hard in the fifth through seventh, making 20 pitches in each and working around a hit in each frame.


Ismael Valdes pitched well for Texas, shutting out the Tribe into the sixth, but Vizquel’s two out homer was one of just five he would hit this season.

#105---CHA @ CLE, 4/4/2001

This was the second game of the 2001 season, and I noted a the top of the page that it marked the end of the streak of 455 consecutive sellouts at Jacobs Field, coming on the heels of the Indians first season failing to reach the playoffs since 1993 (which came at the hands of their opponents, the White Sox). Fickle lot, those Tribe fans, although the 32,763 that showed up for this one is almost equal to the current seating capacity of the ever-shrinking stadium.

This was Sandy Alomar’s first season after leaving Cleveland, so the fans were surely upset by his two-run second inning homer that started the scoring. But the Tribe put up a five spot in the bottom of the second and would later get a homer from (of course) Russell Branyan and roll to an 8-4 win. No, I do not specifically search for scoresheets with Branyan homers to post here.

#104---CLE @ TOR, 3/5/2000

For this spring training game, I was using a customized version of my normal scoresheet designed especially for spring training. Thus the special line for “SITE” and the pre-marked “ST” label, to save ten seconds of writing?

Looking at old spring training scoresheets, the game itself is usually not that interesting, but it’s fun to see the names that pop up earlier than one might expect, later, or in a different place. One example of the first and third items I listed is Casey Blake, later the third baseman for the Indians 2007 division winner and then trade bait for Carlos Santana, replacing Tony Batista for Toronto and doubling in the eighth. Blake had actually made his big league debut in 1999 with Toronto, but would appear in just 35 games in the majors over the next three seasons before emerging as a regular for the Indians in 2003 at age 30.

Charlie Manuel wasted no time getting his regulars out of this game, yanking Jim Thome, Travis Fryman, and Sandy Alomar after just one PA each (including running for Thome and Fryman when they reached base). Maybe he knew something; the Indians would have a ridiculously injury-riddled season this year, although more on the pitching than hitting side. Russell Branyan pinch-ran for Fryman and homered. Of course he did. It seems at least that every Cleveland spring training scoresheet I’ve ever posted here features a Branyan dinger.

#103---All-Star Game, 7/13/1999

This was certainly the most memorable All-Star Game of my lifetime, with the famous Ted Williams first pitch meet & greet, then Pedro going all Carl Hubbell in front of the fans. You can see that Martinez fanned Barry Larkin, Larry Walker, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Jeff Bagwell. Hubbell’s famous strikeout skein was against Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, and Joe Cronin--a more illustrious group, no doubt, but one can still make the case that Pedro’s should have also been five Hall of Famers.

I had no recollection that Tony Fernandez had bounced back to be an All-Star; in my mind his career ended with his tumultuous 1997 postseason with Cleveland, but Fernandez was worth over 6 combined bWAR in 1998-1999 back with Toronto. Other surprising all-star names that pop up include Ron Coomer, Jose Offerman, and Kent Bottenfield. And I still couldn’t spell “Guerrero”.

#102---NYA @ CLE, 6/19/1998

 
This is at least the second time I’ve posted a scoresheet of the greatest team of my lifetime, the 1998 Yankees, losing. At the time I was a typical Yankee-hater, especially since they would ultimately beat my beloved Indians in the ALCS.

I distinctly remember this game; I was in Florida but was able to listen to this game on the Yankee’s Tampa affiliate (yes, they had such a thing, even in the Devil Rays’ inaugural season). I kept it on a form that was designed for tracking statistics for APBA games; on our vacation I had bought a APBP starter kit with the 1995 playoff teams for about $5 at a Big Lots. Why that compelled me to keep score of a major league game on the accompanying sheet is a mystery, though.

Jim Thome was the star of the game, hitting two homers and drawing two walks.

#101---CLE @ KC, 3/16/1997

For this spring training game, I was once again using a pre-printed form with the multiple choice quiz, but at least I was tracing the diamond and not being ridiculously excessive in my notation.

This is the second straight game I’ve posted in which Albie Lopez started for Cleveland; apparently I had the misfortune of choosing to disproportionately score his games. It’s a spring training game so there isn’t that much of note here, but I enjoy seeing Mike Sweeney batting eighth and catching for Kansas City, as well as the appearance of Trenidad Hubbard, who at least in my memory was scorching at the plate during spring training 1997. I believe I took to calling him the “Immortal Trenidad Hubbard” during this time in homage to the Immortal Joe Azcue. I should go to the storage locker and dig out old Baseball Weekly copies to verify. Hubbard would get into seven regular season games for the Indians. He had a weird career, making his major league debut at age 30 in 1994, then appearing in every major league season through 2003. His career OPS+ was 86 in 864 PA, but he was a  legitimately good bench piece for the Dodgers at age 34 in 1998, with a 116 OPS+ in 235 PA.

#100---CLE @ TOR, 4/28/1996

My earliest scoresheets are horrible to try to read; not only was I using a terrible “circle how the batter reached” pre-printed sheet, but I insisted on using drawn out notations like “FLY 7” when a simple 7 would have sufficed. If you can soldier through that, this was a fun game for the Indians as they absolutely destroyed Frank Viola, lighting him up for ten runs in four innings. The biggest single blow was Sandy Alomar’s 3-run homer in the first, and Albert Belle hit a solo shot in the fourth. The onslaught didn’t stop when Viola got the hook, as the Indians scored six in two innings off Giovannie Carrara, including a two-run homer by Alvaro Espinoza, one of a career-high 8 he would hit in 1996 (8 of his career 22, it really was the silly ball era).


Toronto’s scoring came on three solo homers: Sandy Martinez, Carlos Delgado, and Ed Sprague. One thing I can’t figure out is how one was supposed to be able to tell if substitutions occurred in the top or bottom of an inning; the substitutes are all just listed with an inning number (e.g. Kirby 6). Maybe it was assumed to be top or offense or some other default unless otherwise noted?

#99---South Africa v. Australia, 2/13/2016 (World Baseball Classic Qualifier)

Happy Baseball!

This was the first game I scored in 2016, the final of the WBC qualifier played in Sydney that featured the host Aussies, South Africa, New Zealand, and the Philippines. Australia had competed in the first three editions of the Classic, while South Africa had played in the first two as something of a token representative of Africa before qualifying was put in place. Obviously Australia was the favorites, with starter Travis Blackley, reliever Peter Moylan, and right fielder Trent Oeltjen among their players with MLB experience.

Despite the talent imbalance and lopsided final score, it was a very fun game to watch. Gift Ngope led off with a homer for South Africa, and Oeltjen doubled in a run to tie it in the bottom of the frame. The game stayed tied until Australia led off the fifth with back to back homers, but South Africa came right back to lead 4-3 on a three-run homer. Once again the lead was short-lived as the Aussies tied it in the sixth, then took the lead with two in the seventh.

South Africa wasn’t done yet, scoring a run to pull within 6-5 and stranding the tying runner at third. But in the bottom of the eighth, their thin bullpen finally cracked, with Australia sending eleven to the plate and scoring four times off a parade of South African relievers. Still, it was a good way to start another year of watching baseball and keeping score.

#98---TOR @ NYA, 4/6/2015

Last year’s Opening Day game for the Blue Jays and Yankees marked the first game for Didi Gregorius as Derek Jeter’s replacement and the major league debuts of Deveon Travis (an impressive two walks and a homer) and Miguel Castro (who retired all three Yankees he faced and got out of the eighth when Gregorius, clearly cracking under the pressure of replacing His Holiness, was inexplicably caught stealing third with runners on first & second, two outs, and the Bombers down five runs).

A-Rod also returned from his inane suspension with a single and a walk, while the Jays got to Masahiro Tanaka for five runs in the third, capped by a two-run shot by Edwin Encarnacion.

I don’t think there are any new notations here, but I will draw your attention to how I indicate shifts, which obviously are a bigger factor now than before. I have no way of marking a shift unless an out is recorded; even if I wanted to clutter my scoresheet with that information, it would only be possible when at the park. Most telecasts are too busy showing moron fans to bother with trivialities like where the fielders are positioned.

But if the fielder makes a play outside of his normal position, I mark it with subscript. So on Navarro’s groundout in the third, Gregorius (the shortstop, 6) made the play up the middle, but on the shortstop’s side of the bag (64). Headley’s groundout in the fourth came as Travis was positioned in shallow right-center (98S).

Or as I put it in a blog comment:

From the perspective of a “pleasure scorekeeper”, I don’t endeavor to record zones to the level that a Project Scoresheet-style scorekeeper would. I use a subscript if the fielder who makes the play is significantly removed from his normal position. 4(9S)3, where the 9S is actually written in subscript between the 4 and the 3, would indicate a 43 putout in which the second baseman fields the ball in shallow right. Similarily, 6(46)3 would be a 63 in which the shortstop fields the ball on the second base side of the bag, but not in the standard second base zone--that would be 6(4)3.

I divide the outfield into 7l, 7, 78, 87, 8, 89, 98, 9, and 9l, which I would also use for a groundball hit through the infield regardless of whether it might have been hit at the fielder’s normal position. So a single through the vacated third base position would probably just be a -7l or a -7 (line below the 7 to indicate a groundball).

The distinction between the zones and the “standard” fielder positions is all just on what it looks or feels like to me, so obviously this approach is not suited for collecting data for analytical purposes. But as a relatively simple and space-conserving way in which to reflect some of this information on a traditional scoresheet, I find it satisfactory.

#97---CHA @ TOR, 6/28/2014

After finally taking the plunge to track the score of the game in-progress, I applied the same basic approach to tracking all of the summary statistics. Previously I displayed these for each inning as R-H-W-LOB; to save space I now smashed them all together, so that 1201 was 1 run, 2 hits, 0 walks, 1 left. If the running total changed from the previous inning (i.e. if the line for the inning was anything other than 0000), then the new total was listed to the right, as you can see for the Blue Jays’ second. If the values ever cease being single digits (which did not happen in this game, but often do; obviously 10+ hits in a game is not a particularly rare event), then I break it into two lines, with runs and hits on top, walks and LOB on the bottom. The final tally for the game, from whatever inning it was reached, is boxed in at the end of the game.

Early in this game, only the totals in Toronto’s boxes were doing much changing, thanks to a 2-run fifth inning homer by Darrin Mastroianni (these were not your 2015 Blue Jays, as the lineup presence of Glenn and Tolleson also suggest). Marcus Stroman was pitching great into the seventh, recording the first two outs before surrendering a double to would-be Rookie of the Year Jose Abreu and walking Adam Dunn (one of my favorites who had a great game in this his final season, singling, doubling, and drawing two walks, yet also inexplicably getting caught stealing to end the fifth--the only time he was caught this season, and one of just two attempts). Dustin McGowan was summoned, and promptly served up the lead as Dayan Viciedo hit a three-run bomb. In the eighth, McGowan had his own two-out trouble, with Adam Eaton singling to first base and Gordon Beckham following with a single. Aaron Loup surrendered a single to Connor Gillaspie and the White Sox had a 4-2 lead. Toronto quickly scored with a double and single to start the ninth, but could do nothing more.

#96---PHI @ CIN, 4/15/2013

One thing that I have always had trouble keeping in mind about scorekeeping is that “score” is prominently included in the name. I have always been so focused on recording the minutia of the play on the field that the score of the game has often been afterthought. Of course, part of recording the play on the field is marking when runs are scored, and I have never had any trouble doing that. However, I have often eschewed any sort of summary of the game in progress. Some of the earliest examples with the scoresheet I’ve basically been using since 1998 don’t even include the final score of the game. I knew it at the time, and figured that if I were ever interested in revisiting it, I could just tally up the runs then.

Eventually I made a point of recording the final score of each game (which also made it easy to spot scoresheets that showed the first nine innings of an extra-inning affair, since they had no final score), but it wasn’t until 2013 that I bothered to record a running tally of the score as the game progresses, which you can see in this example. The 2, enclosed with a box, at the end of the Reds’ seventh inning line indicates their total score at this point was 2. When they added another pair in the eighth, this became a 4. I only recorded this running score if it changed, which cuts down on excess writing but sometimes requires a look back through the previous inning summaries.

This was a good game; through 6.5 innings both Bronson Arroyo and Cliff Lee had three-hit their opponents. But in the Cincinnati seventh Votto singled, Phillips doubled, Votto scored on a wild pitch that also moved Phillips to third, Bruce walked, and Frazier hit a sac fly. But Philadelphia would tie it on Chase Utley’s two-out, two-run pinch hit homer in the eighth. But Jerry Horst allowed two hits, then intentionally walked Joey Votto as Mike Adams was summoned with only one out. Brandon Phillips singled in two runs on a 1-2 pitch, and Aroldis Chapman mowed down the Phillies in the ninth. The final was 4-2, and you could actually finally follow the progress towards it on my scoresheet.

Note Chris Heisey's 7th inning PA, in which he reached on a throwing error by the pitcher. The "-->2" under the "TE1" indicates that the errant throw was directed to second base. Otherwise, in lieu of any notation, it would be assumed to have been made in an attempt to retire Heisey, the batter-runner.

#95---KC @ LAA, 4/6/2012

This was the last game I watched during an opening day binge in 2012, and it was a simpler time. The Royals lineup has many names that were familiar during the 2014-2015 dystopian postseasons, but they weren’t very good yet and Bruce Chen was their opening day starter. Well, the latter may be different from the current reality in name only. Their opponent was the Angels, sans Mike Trout, who would not be recalled until later in the spring. But Jered Weaver cruised, giving up four hits, no walks, fanning ten, and making just 97 pitches over eight shutout innings. KC kept it close until the first four Angels singled in the eighth and Erick Aybar hit a bases-clearing triple. This was also Albert Pujols’ first game for LAA, lining into a DP, popping up, fanning, and being intentionally walked.

It doesn’t look as if any new notations showed up in my scoresheet. However, Betancourt's at-bat in the seventh featured a rate play for which you can see my scoring. He fouled off the sixth pitch, and noted fielding whiz Mark Trumbo muffed in foul territory. I note this by bracketing [CE5] after the regular notation ("F") for that foul ball (F because it was the sixth pitch). There's no need to note that the error occurred in foul territory because the context makes it clear.

#94---CHA @ CLE, 4/2/2011

This was the second game of the 2011 season for the two teams, which is most interesting to me because Carlos Carrasco got the start for the Indians. Carrasco would of course not really emerge as a good major league starter until late in the season in 2014 (or 2015 if you prefer a full-season performance to make that determination), but the Tribe’s rotation to open 2011 was Fausto Carmona, Carrasco, Justin Masterson (who would emerge as the #1 starter), Josh Tomlin (still a candidate for the rotation in 2016), and Mitch Talbot. Carrasco, surrended five runs in the first two frames then settled in, but was somewhat surprisingly sent out to work the seventh after allowing a sixth run in the sixth.

You also might note the presence of Chris Sale, then working out of the ChiSox pen, mowing down all five Indians he faced, including Ks of lefties Shin-Soo Choo and Travis Hafner. Orlando Cabrera was batting sixth at second base and also fanned.

Looking at the scoresheet I don’t see any new notations or flourishes jumping out, but sometimes I add those as the season goes on and of course minor ones don’t necessarily manifest in each game.

#93---TEX @ SEA, 3/17/2010

The scoresheet used here is one that I use for Spring Training games almost exclusively. The diagram of the field allows for a convenient way to record defensive replacements even when you’re not exactly sure where they will be placed in the lineup. In my early scorekeeping days I assumed all substitutions were straight-up, and erased as necessary later. Some managers seemed to make it their personal mission to thwart scorekeepers using that approach by never batting their new third baseman where their departing third basemen hit.

Then I moved on to keeping a separate piece of paper to write down defensive changes, then entering the players into the lineup as they came to the plate. This is a good system, although it involves another piece of paper, and one I still use for the All-Star Game. But if I’m not keeping a pitch-by-pitch record of the game (and even a nut like I usually don’t for spring training), the diagram is handy.

The other different thing about this scoresheet is that in this case, since the scoreboxes are much smaller than I’m accustomed to, I used a hit location scoring system inspired by LL Bean’s scoring system to save space. Thus Julio Borbon’s leadoff single was a flyball single to left; Nelson Cruz’ second inning single a groundball single to center; and Vladimir Guerrero’s fifth inning single a line drive to left.

This must have been one of the last times I watched my first (and fairly brief) childhood baseball idol play. Ken Griffey grounded to first, popped to third, flew to center, and struck out. I was right to dump him for Barry Bonds by late 1995.

#92---CLE @ MIN, 6/4/2009

It has been over five years since I have posted a scoresheet here. A lot has changed in the last five years; most notably in this context, I have less idle time to sit around and scan/upload/write about old scoresheets. But what has not changed is my obsession, my compulsion with keeping score of every game that I sit down to take in, be it in person or on TV or even on the radio (and sometimes, in desperate and sad situations, on internet gametrackers). And so as I thought excitedly about the prospect of watching and scoring the South Africa/Australia WBC qualifier final tonight, on a day with single digit temperatures and a blanket of snow outside, I decided to bring back Weekly Scoresheet.

I may have less free time than I did when I posted scoresheets weekly, but what I really did not have for the last five years was a scanner. Why an adult man with a perfectly decent income could not be bothered for five years to buy a scanner or even a printer is a matter best left unexplored, but I now have such a device, and so I no longer have any excuses. While every 267 weeks does not fit the weekly of the blog's title, I will endeavor to make the frequency of posting at least a little more than every 267 weeks.

Of course, this blog is by definition a vanity project. It has never had a non-negligible number of readers, nor should it. Another person's scoresheets may be interesting for a few examples, gleaning a few different ideas or gawking at terrible handwriting. Were they for the pre-Project Scoresheet era, they may have analytical value; fortunately, my entire life has a baseball fan has been lived in an era in which play-by-play accounts of major league games are preserved as a matter of course. So this blog has no function other than to allow me to reminisce about my own baseball viewing experiences, and that's enough reason for me to maintain it.

The game here is an eminently forgettable game from 2009, but my general pattern for this site is to post one scoresheet from each season of my time keeping score, then go back to the beginning. With a multi-year absence, I'll pick it up again in 2009. I also try to make note of any changes I've made to my personal scorekeeping style for each year, although at this point my memory of what I might have changed six years ago is more than a little hazy. In looking back at the blog archives, it looks like the last wholesale change I made was in 2010, and I have already documented it on this blog .

This Indians/Twins tilt was literally on top of the 2009 Scoresheets folder in my file cabinet. Minnesota battered Fausto Carmona for seven runs over the first two frames, punctuated by a pair of three-run homers from Jason Kubel. Joe Mauer also had a fine Mauer-type game in his MVP season, drawing a walk, hitting three singles, and scoring four runs. Scott Baker no-hit the Tribe through 4 1/3 before Mark DeRosa doubled; later Chris Gimenez would homer to center of Baker in the 7th inning on a 0-1 pitch for his first major league hit.