Substitution Detail
A relief pitcher is notated within the strict chronological account of the game.
Notation Detail
Piazza, batting 4th in the lineup, right-handed this appearance, sees the pitch sequence: ball, throw to 1B, ball, called strike, put in play. He winds up flying out to the left fielder for the 2nd out of the inning.
Plain Paper Scorekeeping
Alex Reisner
8 April 2004
You arrive at the ballpark with clever banner and oversized foam finger, but wait...you forgot to bring a scorecard! You can't buy one of those awful things from the vendor inside. It's time to improvise.
My goal was to see how much data I could readably record without the use of a pre-printed form. Benefits of the method:
- decide, at the last minute, what kind of data you want to focus on collecting, or change mid-game in response to what seems most relevant
- plenty of space for comments and annotation as well as the usual play-by-play codes
- substitutions are fast and easy to log
- very linear, readable approach (assuming one knows the Project Scoresheet codes)
- quickly see the relative lengths of each inning (and at-bat)
A few of the major downsides are:
- rewriting each batter's name
- not easy to add up or notate totals of any kind
- like Project Scoresheet, difficult to determine who's on what base during a given at-bat
- most games require more than two sides of paper
Clearly this method is not polished, but I think the benefits are worth examining for those interested in scorecard design. I, for one, was surprised by how quickly and readably one could notate offensive and defensive substitutions. If anyone tries this method or has any ideas for improving it I'd love to hear about it.
The notation is basically that of Project Scoresheet, plus:
- I use a subscript "L" or "R" to note the handedness of each batter
- Pitches (underlined only for data separation) use the current Retrosheet notation ("S" = swinging strike, "F" = foul, "T" = tipped, etc) with throws to bases ("1", "2", or "3") in superscript.
- A dot at the end of a batter's line means he scored, and open circles are for RBIs. Circled numbers are outs.
- Inning totals are indicated in the left margin ( R | H | E | LOB ) with game-so-far totals in parentheses. Obviously one could add pitch totals to these, but as I couldn't think of an especially readable way of doing so, I've omitted them.
