#149---BOS @ BAL, 2/27/2013

I’ve posted Spring Training games scored on this sheet before, and I’ve posted games scored using a derivative of LL Bean’s symbol scorekeeping before as well. But I’ve never disclosed the name I call this scoresheet by before because it is silly and didn’t seem relevant.

I have gone through a couple phases in my life where I felt compelled to “design” a bunch of different blank scoresheets. I think I have enough of them now that I always have one on hand that fits my needs for a particular situation, so I haven’t done much of it lately. One of these spurts was in early 2010, as the season approached and the Winter Olympics were being contested.

When I went through one of these phases, I ended up slapping non-sensical names on the various scoresheet designs to tell them apart. After all, there are only so many descriptive names (“two teams, one page, field diagram” might work for this one) available. So I’ve used space shuttles (Columbia, Challenger, etc.), players from my OOTP league (Rollson), and random names in the news. Random names was the theme here, and given the timing, the Olympics were in the news. And a curling skip named Shuster was not exactly getting rave reviews back home in the US, and for some reason I named this scoresheet Shuster. Now he has a gold medal and I’m less likely to forget the name of this sheet.

#148---IND @ CLB, 8/12/2012

In the last entry I extolled the virtues of a spring training scoresheet that featured Mike Trout. Minor league scoresheets sometimes have the same allure. This is not one of them. AAA rosters are generally not packed with prospects, and that was true for this game between the Indians (confusingly to some, the Pirates AAA affiliate) and the Clippers (the Indians affiliate). There are certainly names you probably recognize (Brock Holt, Jose Tabata, Yamaico Navarro, Matt LaPorta, Even Meek to pick a handful), but none that really pop. The game was entertaining enough, with Indianapolis’ four run fourth augmented by a single run in the seventh enough to hold off a late charge from the homestanding Clippers.

#147---LAA @ CLE, 3/11/2011

It’s tough to score Spring Training games. I have done it for as long as I have scored any baseball games; in fact, the earliest extant scoresheets of a professional game I have in my own hand are from spring training 1996 (I definitely kept score of Game 6 of the 1995 World Series and then erased it all in a pique of rage and sadness after the Indians lost). I am now amazed that I was able to do it before GameTracker existed; maybe it’s just my perception, maybe it’s specific announcers, but it seems that now broadcasters barely even try to keep you appraised of changes once the game enters the wholesale substitution phase.

Even the people entrusted to bring the game alive for you will sneer, especially during Spring Training; just last week (as I write this in March 2018), the voice of the Indians Tom Hamilton intoned “If you’re keeping score with us at home, you need to find a new hobby”.

So then why do I score spring training games? For one thing, I miss baseball and scorekeeping after the long winter. At the first opportunity, I want to get out the pencil and the clipboard and a fresh, clean scoresheet and start a new year. For another (related reason), scorekeeping is just what I do. I see a baseball game, I listen to a baseball game, I score it. It’s second-nature, it’s natural, it’s irresistible.

But every once in a while you’ll be partaking in one of these games and a young player will get a token at bat or inning. Maybe you know their name; they might be a late first-round pick from a cold weather state that got exposure by actually showing up at the MLBN studios for the draft. Maybe you don’t know their name, but you’ll recognize it years later.

Maybe he’ll come up to the plate in the ninth-inning to face a legitimate major league reliever like Tony Sipp. Maybe he’ll work the count to full watching all five pitches before he strikes out swinging to end the game. But you probably won’t remember it. If you look at the scoresheet after the game, it won’t resonate. You don’t know it yet, but you will. The man, the magic, the aura, the legend, the myth:

Trout.

#146---ATL @ NYN, 4/25/2010

This isn’t the shortest possible scoresheet for a game that counts, but it’s close. Most of the key moments in this game came with two outs in the first. In the top, Atlanta loaded the bases before Jason Heyward popped up. In the bottom, Jose Reyes dropped a single into left. He stole second on the second pitch to Jason Bay, and on the next pitch Bay singled to Chipper Jones, who threw it away to allow Reyes to score.

Rain came after one pitch was thrown in the top of the sixth. I’ve always thought that would wipe Raul Valdes’ relief appearance out of history, resulting in a pair of complete games after the starters combined to make 199 pitches through five innings, but who really cares about the intricacies of the complete game rule?

My notation for Hanson's strikeout in the second deserves a little exposition. The squiggly line underneath is my symbol for bunt. If its attached to a strikeout, by default it should be interpreted as a foul bunt for the thirds trike. In this case, Hanson offered at the pitch but did not make contact, so the brace indicates a swinging bunt K (the brace is my usual symbol on a pitch letter for a swinging strike, as seen on pitch B to Jose Reyes in the bottom of the first and many other places on the sheet. You could have a backwards K with a bunt line too, in the event the batter showed bunt but took the pitch for strike three.