Baseball season is in full swing, and you may see me at a game with a spiral bound book open on my knees, scribbling some inscrutable code onto a grid littered with little diamonds. Fans sitting nearby are always hitting me up for conversation about what it’s like scoring a game, or “what just happened!?”, or “hey, how many RBIs does that player have in today’s game?”
I love the camaraderie my scorebook sparks between us fans, but scoring a game also keeps me alert to what’s happening, heightens the suspense, and gives me something to do with my hands so I’m not wringing them nervously every time there’s a full count. I learned the intricacies of baseball by learning to score a game.
For beginners looking to learn about the game from an eminently readable (read: jargon-free) source, check out Zack Hample’s Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan’s Guide for Beginners, Semi-Experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks.
You might be wondering: what is the box score?
Henry Chadwick edited the first baseball guide for public consumption, The Beadle Dime Base-Ball Player. In the annual, he listed what are thought to be the first baseball statistics – familiar to baseball fans today – outs, runs, home runs, strikeouts. The earliest box score on record appeared in an 1859 issue of Clipper magazine, which Chadwick adapted from the cricket scorecard; he had previously covered cricket for the New York Times. This box score took the form familiar to fans today: a grid with nine rows for players and nine columns for innings. Chadwick assigned numbers to each field position to record the events of each inning.
A box score functions as shorthand for the action of the game. In 1859, remember, there were no radio or television broadcasts, so the box score was intended to jar the sports writer’s memory when penning the recap after the fact. Today, each team has an official, professional scorekeeper, and legions of fans keep score for their own pleasure. So, how exactly does one “score a game”?
I’ll urge you to check out Patrick McGovern’s scoring tutorial if you want to dig deeply into learning to score baseball. But remember, each fan scores a bit differently. If you know what your code means, that’s all that matters. Here are a few fundamentals to get you started:
Player Positions
- Pitcher
- Catcher
- 1st Base
- 2nd Base
- 3rd base
- Shortstop
- Left Field
- Center Field
- Right Field
Play Abbreviations
- 1B Single Base Hit
- 2B Double Base Hit
- 3B Triple Base Hit
- HR Home Run
- DP Double Play Out
- BB “Base on Balls” a.k.a. a Walk
- HBP Hit by Pitch
- DH Designated Hitter
- CS Caught Stealing
- K Strikeout
- SB Stolen Base
- WP Wild Pitch
- E Error
Keeping Score
- Copy down the lineup for each team, including his position on the field.
- During gameplay, note each player’s trek along the bases by tracing the diamond from base to base as he advances. When a player scores a run, fill in the diamond.
- If a player is tagged, caught, or struck out, note this by indicating the ball’s path using the field position numbers. For example, 5-3 would denote that the 3rd baseman picked up the ball and threw it to 1st base to beat the runner for an out at first. F7 would indicate that the hitter was out via a fly ball caught by the left fielder.
- Experienced scorekeepers often keep record of each player’s statistics – for instance, RBIs (runs batted in), at-bats (AB), how many times he was left on base (LOB), and for pitchers, how many innings pitched (IP) and any earned runs (ER) – but you can always tally these at the end of the game if play is too frenetic as you learn, or not at all if those details don’t matter as much to you!
There are plenty of ways to refine your record-keeping, but the fundamentals are pretty simple: show the progress of each batter around the bases and tally the score for every inning.
If you’d like to learn more about the game, check out the 2nd Balcony of the library for books that may interest you. Baseball books are shelved at call number 796.357, including The Numbers Game: Baseball’s Lifelong Fascination with Statistics by Alan Schwarz.
Learn more about the history of baseball scoring
“The Man Who Made Baseball’s Box Score a Hit” by Mike Pesca, from NPR’s Morning Edition, July 30, 2009
“Myth of Baseball’s Creation Endures, With a Prominent Fan” by Tim Arango, from the New York Times, November 12, 2010
“The Englishman Dubbed ‘The Father of Baseball’” by Andy Birkett, from BBC News Online, July 6, 2015
National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Biography of Henry Chadwick
[image copyright Heather Terrell, Used by Permission.]
