A few weeks ago, my brother Chris was at CitiField for a Mets game and one of the twins was doing what she likes to do at a game…keep score. An usher walked by, looked down and asked her why she was doing homework at a game. When she explained she was keeping score of the game, the usher didn’t understand why.
Time for the Mets to educate their ushers.
While keeping score at a baseball game may seem quaint, it actually provides great social connectivity and an attention to detail, as well as using skills in and around STEM, that remains pretty valuable. This idea of scorekeeping…writing down the activity in a game, has come up a few times in the past few weeks, each time serving as a reminder that traditions have value. When we were at the Little League Hall of Fame last week, our colleague Kevin Fountain mentioned that the amount of people sitting on the hill or in the stands keeping score during The Little League World Series was always surprising. Why do they score? First it gives kids something to do to stay involved in the game that is tangible. It’s not playing on their phones or running off. It’s writing things down to better understand the reason why they are there…and in most cases to document actual people they know playing in the game. Second, it is a tangible tool that one generation shows another. People of a certain age, parents, grandparents, older siblings, passing on a craft…oftentimes that craft is customized by the writer (there are no hard and fast full rules on what your scorecard should look like, guidelines yes, but no must do’s) sitting there enjoying the game and explaining its nuances to those new or learning. It’s an education tool. I witnessed this firsthand again during the NLDS game between the Mets and Phillies at CitiField this week, and have seen it before as well. Someone has a scorecard (I did mine last night like I usually do) and is explaining the how and why to a casual fan through pencil and paper as the game progresses.
It may seem annoying to the diehards as they over hear the questions of “why is a strikeout a K” but it does what baseball is supposed to do…facilitate a conversation amongst those watching a game with no clock, and with lots of natural breaks to talk, to think and to analyze for periods short or long…and to educate through the symbols and the words in a book.
In a time when visual learning, especially tied to STEM, is tantamount for young people, those numbers, those symbols, those lines that build a story with data and images, are pretty underrated as a tool, especially given the communal power of sports to people of all ages today.
Then there is the keepsake, the literal book of memories itself. Yes, its true we are tied to devices in our hand, and there are plenty of tools to even make scoring on a device a lot easier and maybe shareable. But there is still something that is important and valuable in the discovery through the tangible pages of something like a scorecard. Twice in the past few weeks I discovered memories long lost by me and others through those symbols on a page. The first was when my colleague Frank Brown was cleaning out his storage space in Massachusetts and gifted me some tangible items. One was a scorecard kept by his father for the 1966 Mayor’s Trophy game which used to be the only time the Mets and the Yankees would meet in New York in the summer. One game, an exhibition game, that alternated ballparks for the fans. In that scorecard were names…Mantle, Tresh, Ford, Howard…of the greats and what they actually did during the game, a fun look back into history for fans of a certain age to see and even discuss. The other time was when I was going through some of my own boxes and came across a scorebook from my daughter Christine’s seventh grade softball season. Now it isn’t MLB, but it was a memory book of names, people, actions, which took me back on a quick and fun personal journey through names and symbols and numbers.
All invaluable visits that I would not have found scrolling through my phone.
There is some movement that teams recognize the tangible now that they have all our data anyway. Printed commemorative tickets for a small price are slowly finding their way back into the marketplace (but sadly not for the MLB playoffs at least at Citifield), and most teams around baseball sell scorecards. The Mets make it pricey…15 bucks for the playoffs…and it is a magazine. Teams like the Phillies and Royals sell a four page scorecard for every game with a pencil for $3.. Why more teams don’t see that tangible value I don’t know, but I always ask. No one from any team, for all their surveys, has ever asked me.
By the way yes, there is scoring that can be done by fans in programs in other sports. Some college teams, I don’t know of any NBA teams that still do, provide rosters and scorecards for those interested. You can score hockey as well. However, because of the flow of the game, and the nuances of what can be done, baseball is still the scoreiest, so to speak.
It has its own personal style, its flow, and it is art of what makes baseball special. Quaint? Maybe. Outdated? Doubtful. Valuable as a cross generational communications and storytelling tool? For sure.
Try scoring a game next time. You will always know where you stand, and it might facilitate some fun conversations. You only know if you try. Just ask my nieces.
