When I was a child, my dad scored baseball games while listening to them on the radio. When Skip Caray, the play-by-play announcer for the Atlanta Braves, said, "batter reaches first on an outfield error," my dad made some hieroglyphic marks that included a short line, an E and a 7 with a mechanical pencil inside a tiny square on a gridded sheet of paper. He scored games throughout his childhood, and in his adult life, became an accountant. I am not sure which came first, his predilection to account, or his love of scoring baseball. He was a left-handed pitcher whose diving curve won him a couple of high school state championships, acceptance into a fine university, and made him a base hero in the Army. After he threw out his arm, he devoted his energy to being a fan.
At the very core of the game of baseball is a duel between a pitcher and a batter. Every single pitch is a facet of a drama that plays out over a game, a season, even a career. Marking scorecards is a testament to that drama. It requires being present to the most infinitesimal detail of the game, like early swings and foul balls, details that set the stage for double plays and home runs. Scoring a game can place you inside these drama of an at-bat. I think marking marks on scorecards brought my father a little closer to being back on the mound.
I used Adam Sobesy's scorecards for this project. They are utterly complete. There is not a pitch thrown that wasn't accompanied by a mark made by Adam. He calls his method "old school," as it is unabridged and personal. His writing looks like my father's. The marks are made quickly and automatically, without regard to anyone else's ability to read them. Only Adam can truly translate them. After each game, he stores the scorecard in a filing cabinet in his office. Adam says that he almost never goes back to refer to a scorecard. It's not really about the record, but about the process. For a devotee of the game, scoring a game is like counting the Rosary. The process is a meditation on the tranquility of the baseball's rhythm, a rhythm that is occasionally interrupted by home runs.
– JW