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
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.
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