"I will never go back to the traditional scorebook.
— Cuddy Wolf
Baytown River Bandits (semi-pro team)
"It's ideal for what Minor League baseball requires us to do as official scorers and other elements that we need to have in the press box. I would recommend your scorebook to anyone."
— David L. Baker
Official Scorer, State College Spikes (A)
Assistant Athletic Director, Penn State U
"It's a great book. Thanks for putting it out there."
— Jim Warnock
Former STATS, Inc scorer
Find out what the buzz is about: the Situational scorebook.
Baseball
Scorekeeping
I have always been interested in data representation (long-time fan of Tukey and Tufte) and baseball (long-time fan of the Mets, and also of playing baseball), the natural result being that I have spent a lot of time researching and thinking about how to represent baseball data. Mostly I have been drawn to the problem of collecting and representing data on paper. The following are the results of my studies.
17 February 2006
Updated 10 April 2008
By popular demand I am now selling spiral-bound scorebooks featuring the Situational scoring system. You may purchase these books right here.
15 December 2005
There are myriad ways of recording baseball data on paper. Every scorekeeper has their own style and no two scorecards at the park are identical. Here is a growing collection of some unique accounts.
Situational Scorekeeping
Updated 29 April 2008
The Situational system is my own invention, created to address shortcomings of other systems. It's easier to read than the traditional and Project Scoresheet methods and almost eliminates backtracking. It is the most popular system among visitors of this site.
Project Scoresheet Scorekeeping
Updated 29 April 2008
Created in the early 1980s, the Project Scoresheet group produced the first major advancement in scorekeeping since the 1800s, as far as I know. The system is entirely code-based which makes it ideal for computerizing the data. It's probably the fastest way to keep score, once you know the language, but it's not easy to reconstruct a situation when reading it back.
Pitch-Based Scorekeeping
Updated 18 October 2005
Another of my inventions, this gives you a pitch-centric account of the game and is intended for studying pitching strategies. I recommend trying the Situational system first as you'll need to know how it works if you want to record anything about offense.
Traditional Scorekeeping
Updated 29 April 2008
If you want a good old-fashioned scorecard, here it is. This method of scoring has the clear advantage of being the most widely-recognized and therefore easiest to share with other fans.