#39---NYA @ CLE, 7/9/2003

In honor of CC Sabathia's (seemingly) impending move to pinstripes, here is a game he lost to the Yankees in 2003. Three walks, an infield hit, and an error enabled New York to score three in the first, and that was all they would need, as David Wells continued what seemed to be his mastery of the Indians.

Batting ninth at third base for Cleveland was Jhonny Peralta. With talk that he could move to third if the Indians acquire a middle infielder, it is interesting to be reminded that yes, he has played third base before. When he played third in a September game this season, I had no recall of his time at third in '03. But here it is, ony my own scoresheet. If I didn't trust the record books, I'd have to trust that. Memory is nice, but inadequate.

#38---LA @ STL, 7/5/2002

Here's a great scorekeeping tip for you, that will make you look really intelligent should you ever start a vanity blog of your own scoresheets: forget to write the date down on the sheet. A trip to Baseball-Reference revealed that it was July 5, 2002.

The Dodgers scored in the top of the first, but a Pujols homer put St. Louis in front in their half of the inning, and they added two in the second and another in the fifth. But LA came back and led 6-5 going into the bottom of the ninth. Eric Gagne was summoned in the ninth, but Miguel Cairo and Kerry Robinson singled to put men on second and third with nobody out. Fernando Vina was intentionally walked, and it paid off as Placido Polanco hit back to the box for a 123 double play. Gagne coaxed an Edmonds warning track fly, and the Dodgers held on.

#37---KC @ CLE, 9/20/2001

This sheet is included here as an example of how not to keep score. You can’t see it from the scan, but in the sixth inning I switched to scoring in pen. I don’t know why I did this, particularly in the middle of a game, but I did.

There are some people who swear by scoring with ink. If you can pull it off, more power to you, but for me, it’s a disaster. I am too impatient, as I want to write down everything as soon as it happens instead of taking a second to make sure the pitch was actually a ball, or to wait for the official scorer’s ruling. Raul Ibanez’ double in the seventh inning illustrates why pencil is imperative for me.

I don’t know what on earth I was thinking when I wrote down “15” for Alomar’s at bat in the first. A pitcher to third putout of a batter-runner would be worth explaining in more detail. In fact, it was a lineout to third, so it should have been “L5”. So there’s another tip if you are incompetent like me: avoid lower case letters that might be confused for numerals.

#36--OSU v. UM, 5/25/2005

It is the week of the year in which my attention is fixated on the eternal struggle between good and evil, and so here is a scoresheet of one battle in that war. This 2005 game was in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament. The Buckeyes scored two runs in the second, but a ninth inning run by UM tied the game. In the twelfth, OSU regained the lead on Matt Angle’s two-out single, but back-to-back Wolverine doubles tied the game, and Angle’s error made it a runner at third and one out. After Ohio walked the bases loaded, Rory Meister coaxed a 323 double play and the threat was averted.

In the thirteenth, Jason Zoeller drove home Jacob Howell with a double and Paul Farinacci cracked a three-run homer to make it 7-3. Rory Meister struck out the side in the bottom of the frame (albeit while allowing two singles), and the Bucks were staying in the winner’s bracket. They would go on to defeat Minnesota for the Big Ten Tournament championship, thanks in large part to this defeat of the evil maize-clad hordes.

#35--Tampa @ St. Petersburg, 6/22/2000

This was a game between the Tampa Yankees and the St. Petersburg Devil Rays that I attended in St. Pete. There were no future stars playing in the game, but some names that stood out to me were Pete LaForest, Andy Phillips, Juan Rivera, and Brandon Backe (playing shortstop at this point in his career and batting eighth).

#34---COL v. SD, 4/4/1999

This was an Opening Day game played in Mexico. Local hero Vinny Castilla had a good game, going 4-5 as the Rockies rolled 8-2. It is a very sloppy sheet; sloppy handwriting, listing two right fielders for Colorado, not recording the line score for the San Diego 9th...certainly not my best effort.

#33--CLE @ KC, 3/1/1998

The Indians defeated the Royals 6-5 in comeback fashion in this spring training meeting, which given the March 1 date was surely on the opening weekend of play. Kansas City jumped out to a 5-0 lead through five, but Cleveland countered with one in the sixth, four in the seventh (including a three-run blast by someone named Miller...I believe it was David Miller, their first round pick from 1995 . In the ninth, Russell Branyan hit a blast off of Brian Bevil for the game-winner.

#32--CLE @ OAK, 4/3/1997

This was the second game of the 1997 season for the Indians and the A's, kept on my terrible Excel scoresheet. The Indians had a 4-1 lead through four innings, but Oakland tied it with two in the fifth and one in the sixth. Geronimo Berroa's eighth inning homer off Eric Plunk provided the A's with the winning run.

Notable is Mark McGwire's fifth inning homer, the first of 58 that he would hit this season.

#31--CAL @ CLE, 6/7/1996

I kept this game on a photocopy of a Louisville Slugger-branded scoresheet. It was actually my friend's scorebook, and I was trying to teach him how to score, which is why there are two people's handwriting on the sheet. It is a scary thought that I was attempting to teach scorekeeping, as this sheet is horrible, with the runs impossible to pick out as the most basic flaw. Anyway, I can't find the flip side, but the Indians beat the Angels 4-3.

#30---NYA @ BOS, 7/26/2008 & 7/27/2008

These late July Yankees/Red Sox games were the national games of the week on Fox and ESPN, but for some reason I didn’t want to sit down and score every pitch of each game (there must have been something else on TV that I wanted to channel flip to; I might decide not to watch baseball on a particular day, but I almost never decide to devote time to watching an entire game but not score it). So these are bare-bones scoring efforts.

Since I didn’t need a lot of space, I used my “mini” scoresheet, which allows me to score two games on one side of a piece of paper (four games if double-sided).

As a concession to not having each pitch recorded, I use a notation like “WP2” to indicate that there was a wild pitch that occurred during the second batter’s PA--usually I would also note the exact pitch on which this occurred.

This is by no means my favorite way to score a game, but it is easy and it saves a tree every four games (yes, yes, I realize that you can get much more than one sheet of paper from a single tree).