At Tropicana Field one recent Sunday, Jim Joyce cheers the Devil Rays for the 35th time this season. He keeps track of the game the old-fashioned way -- by keeping score in a scorebook. Modern scoreboards tell everything, but he likes to reread his scorebooks years later.
ST. PETERSBURG - Jim Joyce is a serious baseball fan. He grew up in New York, rooting for the Mets when the Mets were the worst team in the history of baseball. His dad was a gloating fan of the dominating Yankees. The son enjoyed the last word in their old arguments. When his father passed away in 1998, he had him buried - in official Mets underwear.
"I'm sure he would have laughed at the joke," Joyce said.
The other day Joyce was at a Devil Rays game at Tropicana Field. Joyce, who lives in Tampa, has transferred his allegiance from the Mets to the Rays. Already this season he has attended 35 games.
That alone establishes him as a serious baseball fan in one of the weakest markets in the major leagues. But what made him stand out even more in the sparsely filled stadium was what he held on his lap like the Rosetta stone.
It was a thick spiral binder full of strange hieroglyphics. Into the book he recorded every play with numbers and symbols understood by any serious baseball fan with more than a few wrinkles or strands of gray. In baseball parlance, Joyce was keeping score.
Years ago, serious fans in every ballpark in America kept track of every play in a scorecard. It was part of baseball tradition, like eating peanuts and booing the umpire. Not anymore. As giant scoreboards overwhelm fans with data, watching baseball more and more is a passive pursuit.
"If you didn't keep a scorecard in the old days it was hard to tell what was happening," said the 46-year-old Joyce. "When you kept track of every play you kept your head in the game. A scorecard told the story of the game."
A scorecard hasn't become the Dead Sea Scrolls quite yet. Tropicana Field patrons can purchase a $5 game program that includes a scorecard, or spring for a plain scorecard for only a buck. But good luck actually finding someone other than a few sports writers or the official scorekeeper in the press box using one.
Now you are more likely to find a spectator with purple hair than a fan writing down what Rocco Baldelli did in his first at-bat. A lost art, scorekeeping in some ways seems as quaint in the 21st century as your great-grandfather's moldy flat-as-a-pancake fielder's mitt.
"The culture of baseball has changed," Roger Angell said over the telephone recently. Angell is the 83-year-old baseball writer at New Yorker magazine whose latest book, Game Time, collects four decades of baseball essays. "For the modern fan, going to a baseball game is like going to a rock concert. The game is only a small part of the spectacle."
At Tropicana Field a fan can watch the game or visit a cigar bar. He or she can spend an inning or two playing billiards or eat a steak dinner in a restaurant above the centerfield wall.
Fans devoted to their scorecard make countless sacrifices. They can't waste time eyeballing the red-hot mama go-go dancing on her seat after her fourth Bud. Or watch the peanut guy toss a bag across three rows. Or nod off when the Rays make still another pitching change after falling behind 9-0 in the third inning.
Who has time to keep score? And why bother?
There are any number of possible reasons. But the best might be "tradition."
Play by play
The other day, Jerry Snyder, 69, was feeling lonely as usual at Tropicana Field. Sitting in the stands behind third base, he was the only person within shouting distance who bothered keeping a scorebook.
"I can't imagine going to a game and not keeping score," said the Sarasota resident, who attends at least one game a week, sharpened pencils in hand.
"I never throw away scorecards," he said. "I like to look at them years later. I can re-create the whole game in my mind. All those fun memories come flooding back."
The only disadvantage to his hobby is a spouse who looks askance on two decades' worth of scorecards taking up precious room in their home. "I had to throw out a whole shelf of National Geographic magazines to make room for my scorecards," Snyder confessed.
Nobody knows the name of baseball's first scorekeeper. But the card kept by the mystery gentleman or gentlewoman, filled out in 1845, is on display at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. The father of modern scorekeeping was a guy named Henry Chadwick, who developed a standardized way of keeping score in 1874 that has survived to this day, according to Paul Dickson's book, The Joy of Keeping Score.
Chadwick's genius was his idea of assigning every position on the field a number. The No. 1 position, for example, was pitcher. Catcher was 2, first base 3, second 4, third 5, shortstop 6, leftfield 7, centerfield 8 and rightfield 9. The system made scorekeeping a snap.
Let's say a batter hit a ground ball to the third baseman, who threw the batter out at first base. In Chadwick's system, score the play 5-3, or third base to first for the out. If the batter hit a fly ball caught for an out by the center fielder - the No. 8 position - score the play F-8. A home run is an HR. A strikeout, interestingly, wasn't S-O in Chadwick's system, though it could have been. He was so impressed by the harsh sound of the letter "k" in "strike" that a strikeout became a K.
In a recent game, Joe Kennedy was pitching for the Devil Rays. He has had his ups and downs this season, but against the Angels he was on target. High in the stands behind the left-field foul line a guy named Adam Knod had eight opportunities to write "K" into his scorecard. Most spectator scorekeepers are gray-haired guys, but Knod is only 28. His friend, Brian Wheeling, is only 29.
Lifelong fans of the St. Louis Cardinals, they were in the midst of a North American tour for the purpose of attending games at every major league stadium. Tropicana Field was No. 27, with three more stadiums ahead. They had taken digital photographs of every stadium and had even made pictures of the food menus at every ball park. Of course, the centerpiece of the memory book under compilation would be scorecards.
"We have learned to determine the seriousness of baseball fans by whether they keep score or not," Knod said. "Last night we saw the Marlins in Miami. We didn't see one person in the stands keeping score. Same thing in both Canadian ball parks. Hardly anybody is keeping score in this park today. So that tells us something about the quality of fans."
In other parks, especially parks where old baseball teams play, they found fans who were keeping old traditions alive.
"In Comiskey Park where the White Sox play we saw quite a few fans keeping score," Knod said. "Wrigley Field, where the Cubs play, had serious fans, though not as serious as in Comiskey. We think it's because Wrigley Field is more of a tourist attraction in Chicago. Even people who don't know anything about baseball think they should go to Wrigley just to say they went."
"The best park was Fenway Park in Boston," Wheeling added. "You can miss a play, you can miss a couple of plays, and don't have to worry. All you have to do is turn in any direction and you'll see somebody keeping score. You can just ask, "What happened?' and catch up."
In Fenway, they never had to resort to the shameful act of writing into the scorecard "WW."
Wasn't Watching.
He's the "E' man
Jim Ferguson is always watching. A bomb could go off behind him, his bladder could cry "empty me" and it wouldn't matter. He would never miss a play. "When I'm going to score a night game," he said, "I don't have anything to drink after lunch. I don't want to have to go to the bathroom."
Ferguson usually has the best seat in Tropicana Field, sitting behind home plate up in the press box. He arrives at the game early, lines his pencils and pens neatly on the counter before him, and opens his beloved scorebook.
Ferguson is the "official scorer" at most of the Devil Rays' home games. When the game is over, Ferguson faxes a copy of his scorecard to Major League Baseball Headquarters for posterity. Only then will he relieve his tortured bladder.
A fan for nearly seven decades, Ferguson believes he has scored more than 5,000 games in his life. That includes a childhood of watching the Cincinnati Reds, an early adulthood of sportswriting for the Dayton Daily News and almost two decades in public relations for the Reds. Now he lives in St. Petersburg, where he is director of media relations for Minor League Baseball and official scorekeeper for about 40 Devil Rays games.
In his office, stacked in cardboard boxes, are hundreds of scorebooks, yellow with age. He can open one at random and remember a Johnny Bench home run or study the narrative of one of Wilson Alvarez's frustrating Tropicana Field pitching performances.
For Ferguson, keeping a scorecard in the Tropicana Field press box is both pleasure and business. He would enjoy scoring even if he weren't paid $125 a game. But his perch in the press box is also a pressure cooker.
As official scorekeeper he has the power to award a hit or an error - statistics that may help earn a player a higher salary in the future. A few points plus or minus on a player's batting average can determine thousands of dollars, perhaps even membership, years later, in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Players pay attention to the official scorekeeper.
"It's a little easier now than it used to be when I was starting out," Ferguson said. "Now if I'm not sure, I can look at instant replay. Years ago, you just had to make the call."
Decades ago, the Reds lineup included a fiery second baseman named Johnny Temple. Ferguson wasn't keeping score the day Johnny Temple was charged with a costly error. A sportswriter named Earl Lawson was.
"After the game, Temple looked up Lawson and argued. He got got hotter and hotter. Temple ended up punching him in the nose."
Ferguson has been booed by fans, but at least his nose is intact.
"One time I judged a little dribbler by Henry Aaron right in front of the plate an error by the catcher instead of a hit," Ferguson said. "It was close, but I felt strongly it was an error. After the game I was in the dugout when Aaron walked over. I thought, "Oh, oh. He's mad.' But he just wanted to talk. It was one of his teammates, I can't remember who, who hollered at me about my call. Henry Aaron was a classy guy. He said, "Hey, I don't want no cheap hits,' and that was the end of it."
Not missing a thing
Rick Martin likes his day job, which is being a graphic artist. He appreciates his night job even more. When Ferguson takes a day off, Martin often takes over as official scorer. At 48 he has a younger bladder than Ferguson, but still limits himself to one Pepsi per game just in case.
"The idea of missing even one play because I had to run to the bathroom scares me," he said.
He grew up in Maine, and by all rights should have been a Red Sox fan. But somehow he joined the dark side and became a fan of the hated Yankees. Family members still think of him as a man of bad judgment. Not long ago, when he was scoring a Red Sox-Devil Rays game, he called an error on a popular Boston player.
"What game were YOU watching?" snarled his Red Sox-worshiping brother, hours later, by long distance.
Being the official scorer brings more trials than tribulations.
If the official scorer isn't being booed by fans or being dissed by statistic-conscious players, he frequently is ducking fouls that hammer the press box like cannon balls fired from a pirate ship. Once or twice a game, a foul seems to sail over the net behind home plate and take aim at his mustache. As he kept score recently, the wall behind him looked scarred and dented.
"I'm almost embarrassed to tell you this," he said between pitches, "but one time a player hit a real easy one back here, a lollipop that I should have caught. I mean it was a slow, easy one - I should have had it! - but it bounced right out of my hands."
Score that one E-SK.
Error on the scorekeeper.
- Jeff Klinkenberg can be reached at 727 893-8727 or by e-mail at klink@sptimes.com
