#13---Home Run Derby, 7/6/1998

This is a “scoresheet” of the 1998 Home Run Derby, kept on a piece of loose-leaf notebook paper. The system is simple enough--"O” for out and “H” for home run.

I kept a Home Run Derby scoresheet in 1999 as well; I don’t believe that I have even watched it since then. It’s actually sort of embarrassing, but it does illustrate the depths of my compulsion to write things down while watching baseball competitions.

And how in the heck did Damion Easley get himself in the Home Run Derby?

#12---CLE @ TOR, 5/30/1998

Another unremarkable game (a 4-2 Blue Jay win) here because of some evolution in my system. You can see that there are now location codes for hits, “L”, “C”, or “R” for the field they were hit to. Not seen in this game was “+” as a symbol for an infield single, the regular horizontal dash for a single with a vertical dash through it.

I also began recording the specific pitch on which events such as stolen bases or wild pitches occurred, but the means of doing so was clumsy. A “x” in the bottom righthand corner of the box in which the pitch occurred indicated that there was a note. The notes are at the top of the scoresheet, separated by semicolons. This forces one to go through the entire sheet, finding the x’s in order, and then figuring out which pitches they are associated with. But it was a start.

For some reason I cannot recall, I was marking popups to infielders with a “F” prefix (i.e. “F4”, “F5”, etc.). My philosophy now is not to specifically mark things that are obvious. If the third baseman had fielded a groundball and recorded a putout, it would have had to be a fielder’s choice, part of a double play, or a runner out advancing--all of those would get their own mark. So given that it is an unassisted putout by the third baseman with no other scoring prefix to explain it, it had to have been a popout. So why write that out? For some reason, I was doing it at least for this game.

#11---CLE @ ANA, 4/5/1998

The 6-4 Cleveland win over Anaheim, less than a week after the game in #10, was not noteworthy, but is included here because my scoring system got some minor alterations very early in the season. Namely, balls and strikes were now marked with letters, making the first pitch “A”, the second pitch “B”, etc. This greatly reduced the clutter of circled numbers all over the scoresheet, and allowed me to use circled numbers to track baserunner progress and squares to mark runs scored, rather than poorly drawn triangles.

Again, the score is nowhere to be found, and the name of the home team is “California” rather than the correct “Anaheim”. This was not an oversight--I was just bizarrely stubborn and continued to refer to the team that way. Some other early 1998 scoresheets of mine list the Devil Rays as “Tampa” rather than “Tampa Bay”. I wonder if I would have referred to the Nationals as “Montreal”.

#10---CLE @ SEA, 3/31/1998

By March of the next year, I had recovered from the trauma of Game 7 and was ready for the start of another season, armed with a brand new scoresheet. The scoresheet that I began using then, and the general method used, are the same ones that I use today (of course, there have been changes along the way, but you can clearly see that they are related).

The scoresheet itself is simple: a 9x9 gird, with no columns for recording box score-like stats, and a space for recording who the pitchers were at the bottom of the page. Pitches are marked on the side of the boxes: balls on the left, strikes on the right, and two strike fouls on the top. Here, I used circled numbers, so the first pitch is (1), the second pitch is (2), etc. The lower right corner of the box represents first base, and the other bases follow in counter-clockwise order. Outs are marked with a solid dot in the box of the man put out. Runner advancement is noted by the batting order number of the responsible batter, boxed in this case. The special case is a run scored, which was enclosed in a triangle. RBI are marked with open circles.

The pitcher box lists the pitchers, with their entry in the game marked with a code like “1-5”, which means that the first batter faced was the man in the #1 position in the order in the fifth inning.

Again, the score is not recorded anywhere on the sheet, which is a serious flaw. The game was actually pretty interesting--the Indians won 10-9 with a four run eighth inning. Cleveland was so terrified of facing Randy Johnson that they held David Justice and Jim Thome out of the lineup, leaving Shawon Dunston (DHing and batting third!) and Jeff Manto in the lineup. Once Johnson was removed, Justice and Thome pinch hit. Dunston was 0-3, but Manto helped chase Johnson with a RBI single in the sixth. Jose Mesa, making his first appearance since blowing game seven, gave the Indians a perfect seventh and eighth to earn the win.

#9---CLE @ FLA, 10/26/1997 (World Series Game 7)

In 1997, I also scored some games on a ridiculous scoresheet I made, inspired by Project Scoresheet’s use of numbered scoreboxes rather than a 9x9 grid. Everything else about the system was traditional.

The scoresheet itself had a silly design. I chuckle at the “SCORESHEET” label on the top; was I afraid I would forget what it was for? The boxes were ridiculously wide, and I didn’t take advantage of that in any way. While the numbered boxes are similar to PS, each batter’s at bats are not grouped together, so you have to add nine and go hunting (the #3 hitter is in box 3, 12, 21, etc.). I did not help matters by drawing dark circles over the numbers of boxes that resulted in outs. The benefit of the system (like that of PS) is that substitutions are very easy to mark. For some reason, I felt compelled to use this sheet to score all of the playoff games that I watched.

As for the game, there’s not much I can say. I was devastated at the time, and it took me a week to have the heart to mark Renteria’s single. I never got around to labeling the Florida eleventh inning.