Upon recognizing my level of baseball mania, a friend of mine recently asked me how to score a baseball game. I launched into a long, informative tirade about the system I learned at my father's knee for keeping track of the complexities of plays, waxing enthusiastic about the elegance of the game meanwhile.

It turned out that what he really wanted to know was how to read a scoreboard. It was quite disappointing. I didn't know that reading a scoreboard was that arcane a piece of information - I mean... runs per inning. Runs. Hits. Errors. Where's the problem here? Little lights at the bottom for outs and strikes and balls.

I guess it's true what they say about the younger generation not having the understanding of baseball of their elders. It's very sad. (And I feel very disturbed by the fact that I am probably at the border of this conceptual gap; after all, I was only about six months old when Bucky *deleted* Dent made himself forever infamous in Fenway, so I had to look him up to figure out how he earned his nickname.)

The first time I went to a baseball game, it was the A Minors farm team for the Baltimore Orioles, the Frederick Keys, in Keys Stadium. My brother and I both had programs, and we learned how to record the plays as we watched the game. (It took us a few times through the lineup to get all the names in, though.)

So. How to score a baseball game. In detail.

The chart in the program has, of course, divisions for home and visiting teams (visiting team bats first). There are usually more than nine lines, in case of substitutions. To the left side of the chart are places to note the name, jersey number, and position of the batter, and then the dozen or so columns, each labelled with the number of an inning. (Better safe than sorry.) So, to give an example of how the top of the lineup would have looked in a recent game (more or less):

What each player does at bat thus has a place to be recorded according to which inning it happens in. (When all hell breaks loose and batters see the plate twice in an inning, it begins to get cluttered, but this is a cross which one must bear.)

Now, in addition to this chart, each position has a number associated with it, which makes perfect sense to newscasters and maniacal game-scorers, but very little to anyone who isn't familiar with the system. Those numbers are:

1. Pitcher
2. Catcher
3. First Base
4. Second Base
5. Third Base
6. Shortstop
7. Left Field
8. Center Field
9. Right Field

When the ball goes into play, these numbers are used to record where the ball goes. A fly out to center is recorded, simply, as "8", in the box for that at-bat. An out recorded by a ball that was hit to right field followed by a play at first is "9-3". If the play is a base hit, the number of bases are recorded with a diagonal slash, in addition to the positional numbers. (So a base hit to left field is "7/". If it were a double, it would be "7//".) If a fielder makes an error, that error is recorded by position number in the record of the play, as, for example, play to first, 1b throws to pitcher, who's covering the bag, pitcher drops the ball: "3-1 E1".

Of course, not all balls get into play. Strikeouts are recorded with a "K", if the batter is out swinging, and the K is written backwards if he's out looking. (I remember this by thinking of the K as a stick-figure of a right-handed batter, and looking at which one is in mid-swing.) A walk is recorded as "BB", for 'base on balls'. If the batter is hit by a pitch, "HBP" instead, for the intuitive, 'Hit by pitch'.

Some at-bats deserve special notations - I've seen a variety of ways of scoring them. These are the ones I use. A sacrifice fly gets the addendum "SF" after the numbers, to record that the player's at-bat was intended to advance a runner rather than to get on base; a bunt is "SH" for sacrifice hit, to prevent it getting confused with a stolen base. Hits that score another runner get the notation "RBI". If a runner reaches base on a Fielder's Choice (where the fielder had the option to get the batter-runner out, but chose to get an out on a different runner), the notation is "FC". On the other side of the coin, a player who bats into a double play gets "DP" added to his numbers, so, for example, a ball that goes from Nomar to Offerman to whoever's playing first for the force at second and at first is recorded as, "6-4-3 DP". I've never seen a triple play, but it'd be recorded with "TP". Tinker to Evers to Chance.

And, of course, runners advance around the bases, so one should leave them space in their little squares to do so. Stolen bases are "SB". I've seen some notations tracing lines around the inner edge of the box, making it a metaphorical diamond, and drawing the whole box for eventual runs.

And one must of course remember... a yard ball is recorded "HR". Home run.

A concrete example:

Scoring Chart: Game 3, 1999 ACLS NYY at BOS. Compiled from the official summary at majorleaguebaseball.com. Played 16 October, 1999. Final score, Yankees 1; Boston 13.

New York Yankees: Starting Pitcher: Roger Clemens (2 IP)