MissChatter’s 2007 Custom Scorebook

April 5, 2007

Custom baseball scorebooks are all the rage and I’m catching the wave and riding it as well! There are TV announcer Bob Carpenter’s books (Nats-specific one soon to be available in the Nats store at RFK) and CapPun’s homemade Kinkos book. After trying nearly every scoresheet style (my favorite) and scoring software on the planet that I could get my hands on and not being fully satisfied, toward the end of last year I began manually scoring every game in a regular old 9×6″ lined notebook in my own unique (and arguably odd) way. One of these days I’ll have to do a review of the software I’ve tried using, and it’s not going to be pretty. I’m giving one particular software’s support an opportunity to address my issues (since I actually bought their off-the-shelf product for more money than the buggy crap is worth), but about a week has gone by with no response, so they will get their roasting soon. I found using a ruler, or more often than not a folded piece of scrap paper lying around, to line the pages of my notebook to be tedious yet required before every game. Jumping on Chris’s bandwagon of printing and binding your own scorebook, I decided to create my own based on what I was doing in the notebook last year and have it bound as well for my very own MissChatter Scorebook this season. Read on if you’re actually interested in this stuff!

Traditional scoresheets don’t really work for me because I love to write little notes and observations about the game in the particular place they occurred. After a game, I refer to these while writing up a post. Plus, my system helps me identify exactly what play one of the 300+ photos I took occurred in – the biggest use of scoring for me is sifting through and labeling my photos. For example, if Ray King hypothetically had a brain fart and forgot to cover first base, I want room to write that. A simple “FC” for fielder’s choice doesn’t cover the whole play that unfolded and looking at a bunch of abbreviations in boxes after a game hardly tells the story of the game, at least to my untrained eyes/brain. Last year, I’d often forget to print off a traditional scoresheet before rushing out to the stadium, but I always carried a little notebook with me in my Nationals cooler bag that serves as my game bag (camera, wallet, notebook, zoom lens all fit in it perfectly). I used the notebook to take the aforementioned notes, but in a pinch, it could serve as my scoring device. I started out kind of randomly writing down what happened during a “forgot scoresheets” game, but eventually by combining a system I learned for generating electronic PDF scoresheets using Perl and traditional scoring methods, my system of hand scoring evolved into what it is today. After a while, I didn’t bother printing scoresheets because I preferred the smaller notebook that fit in my bag to the 8.5×11″ printed sheets and clipboard. Carrying a camera around is enough, and adding a large binder, scorebook, or clipboard made moving around or balancing items in my lap more cumbersome.

My system takes four pages. I created them in Word and copied them double-sided. I intended to have Staples cut them to the smaller size so the book fits in my bag and spiral bind it for me, but learned they cannot bind books/pages smaller than the standard 8.5×11! That was a bummer and slight blow to my plan. I wandered up and down the aisles waiting for lightning to strike a brilliant alternate plan until I ran across a ~9″ x ~6″ 3-ring binder. I figured it’ll have to do. So I went home and watched a game while manually cutting the pages down to size (boy was I wishing I had a paper cutter!). Here’s my system. Hopefully I can explain this in some fashion!

PAGE 1: For one thing, I don’t use jersey numbers. I have the jersey numbers of the Nationals memorized anyway and I could care less what jersey numbers opponents are wearing. Therefore, when I write my lineup out, it’s numbered by batting order. I use these numbers throughout the inning by inning scoring. That way I’m less likely to screw up who’s at bat because I can look at the number in the order the team should be at and compare it to the name on the lineup number. So far it’s worked and I haven’t missed a pinch hitter or double switch either.

The other break from tradition I employ is rather than make inning columns next to the lineups, I strictly use them to track at-bat results. Inning breaks are denoted by thick lines under the third out. For example, you can see above that Ryan Zimmerman hit into fielder’s choice his first three at bats and then singled. Mike Jacobs was the third out in consecutive at-bats. Squiggly lines under a batter’s name indicate a pitching change (typically I use a highlighter to highlight the bottom of the square, but I didn’t have a highlighter handy during this game). The usual thick lines on the side indicate pinch-hitters/replacements.

Obviously pitchers are at the bottom for each team. My only flaw there was not enough lines as I’ve overrun it on every game so far! Luckily, there’s plenty of room at the bottom for excess pitchers used.

PAGE 2: Here’s where I score each play and draw a line across inning breaks. Again, squiggly (but usually highlighted) lines under a batter indicate a pitching change. The visiting team goes on the left and the home team on the right. Why? Because I can visually see side-by-side who had the better inning based on who has the longer listing of plays per inning (like say the Marlins in the first inning). As you can see, there is plenty of room for writing notes (see Wilson and Young comments on left of 1st inning and pointing out the pitcher’s double in the 2nd). After each inning, I write the score at the end of it.

PAGE 3: Obviously, this is identical to page 2 :-) At the top with batter #9 is where I commented on the hypothetical brain fart that hey, really did happen! My old problem of flipping back and forth to the lineup page has been solved with my new and improved printed version. I can fold this page in half and still see the lineups on the previous page no matter which side I’m scoring (away or home). Amazingly, I haven’t run out of space yet, but if I do there’s plenty of room on….

PAGE 4: The “Notes” page. There is where I write non-play bits of interest during a game or the pre-game radio show that I want to remember. Also, like in this example, this is where I run through all my margin and play comments and summarize them.

And there you have it. Thrilling, eh? Next year I’ll try to be prepared long before the day before opening day and maybe send it out for custom binding because I think spiral bound would be far better than the three ring binder.

Posted in Baseball - General, Scoring, Washington Nationals