One is to passively watch the game, the other is to actively see it, and you can't do the latter without a scorecard. In this slim gem of a volume, Paul Dickson clearly explains and translates the quirky documentation system, which looks like cuneiform to the uninitiated, for recording what happens on the ball field, and why true fans are so adamant about doing it. How Scoring the Game Has Influenced and Enhanced the History of Baseball Keeping score at a ball game is one of the rituals that countless fans engage in and enjoy as an integral part of the game itself. This superb little book will enhance that joy as it cleverly explains and illustrates baseball score keeping. A whole variety of systems are in place from the intricately complex to the astonishingly simple.
Any system involves the fans more closely in the game and tends to ratchet up the enjoyment level.
Score keeping has evolved as baseball itself has evolved and as the compilation of records and statistics has grown. The march through the alphabet explaining some aspect of the scorekeeper's joy is a clever way of approaching the subject. He was so indifferent that at the opening game of the 1924 World Series, he rose to leave when the score was tied at the end of the ninth inning. Grace Coolidge had to literally pull him back into his seat by his coattails. Baseball pioneer Henry Chadwick, who was the New York Herald's first baseball editor, first used the symbol in 1868 in Beadle's Guide of which he was the editor.