page_title: Official scorer
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Official scorer / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Henry Chadwick
context_page_description: In the game of baseball, the official scorer is a person appointed by the league to record the events on the field, and to send the official scoring record of the game back to the league offices. In addition to recording the events on the field such as the outcome of each plate appearance and the circumstances of any baserunner's advance around the bases, the official scorer is also charged with making judgment calls that do not affect the progress or outcome of the game. Judgment calls are primarily made about errors, unearned runs, fielder's choice, the value of hits in certain situations, and wild pitches, all of which are included in the record compiled. This record is used to compile statistics for each player and team. A box score is a summary of the official scorer's game record.
  Newspaper writers initially performed this function in the early days of Major League Baseball. As the importance of baseball player statistics increased, teams began to pressure writer-scorers for favorable scoring decisions for their players in games played at home stadiums, and a home team scoring bias was perceived by many coaches, players, and writers.
context_section_description: Henry Chadwick is generally credited with the invention of scorekeeping in baseball. Chadwick was also the inventor of the modern box score and the writer of the first rule book for the game of baseball. Since baseball statistics were initially a subject of interest to sportswriters, the role of the official scorer in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the early days of the sport was performed by newspaper writers. A judgment call that is required by the official scorer does not alter the outcome of a game, but these judgments impact the statistical records of the game. As the subjective scoring decisions which are used to calculate baseball statistics began to be used to determine the relative value of baseball players, MLB began to require approval from the league before a writer-scorer could be assigned to produce the scoring report for a game. By the 1970s, writers who were willing to score games for MLB were required to have attended 100 or more games per year in the prior three years and to be chosen by the local chapter chairman of the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA). Qualified candidates for scoring were submitted to the leagues for approval.
caption: Henry Chadwick
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