How to score a baseball game

Why keep score at all

Nobody needs a scorecard. Every number you could write down is already on a screen somewhere, faster and more accurate than your handwriting. That is exactly why people still do it.

A scorecard changes how you watch. You notice the second baseman shading toward the bag before the pitch, because you are about to have to write down where the ball went. You notice that the leadoff hitter has seen fourteen pitches in two innings, because you are counting them. You leave with an object that says you were there, in your own hand, wrong in a couple of places. Broadcasters keep score for the same reason a chef tastes food: the record is useful, but the attention is the point.

What you need

Four things, and only the first two are strictly required. Everything else in this guide is knowledge, not equipment.

• A scorecard. A printed one from the team, a page from a bound scorebook, or a sheet you drew yourself. Any grid with nine numbered rows and nine or more columns will do.
• A pencil, and a second pencil. Pencil makes ruling changes easy. If you choose pen, bring two fine points and use one clean strike-through for corrections.
• Something firm to write on. A bound scorebook solves this. A loose card and a bare knee does not.
• A way to check the lineup. This is the part that trips up new scorers, and it is worth being honest about: batting orders change, a pinch hitter arrives in the seventh, and a defensive substitution in the fifth is often announced once, quietly, over a public address system nobody can hear.

How do you fill out a baseball scorecard?

Read the card as a spreadsheet. Each row is one spot in the batting order, one through nine, running down the left side. Each column is one inning, running across. The cell where a row and a column meet is one plate appearance, and inside that cell is a small diamond that stands for the four bases.

One detail matters more than it looks. The row is the lineup SPOT, not the player. When a pinch hitter bats for your number-five hitter, they do not get a new row. They inherit row five, usually written on a second line inside it, and everyone who follows them in that spot for the rest of the night goes there too. This is why a scorecard can reconstruct a game hours later and a list of names cannot.

The nine position numbers

Memorize these first. Almost every mark you will make on a scorecard is built out of them, and once they are automatic the rest of scoring is small.

Two things catch everyone. Shortstop is 6 and third base is 5, which feels backwards until you notice the numbers run first base, second base, third base and then double back to the shortstop. And the outfielders are numbered 7, 8, 9 from left to right as you look out from home plate, so 7 is left field, on your left in a seat behind the plate. It runs the other way for the fielders, who face back toward home.

How do you record an out?

Write the fielders who touched the ball, in the order they touched it, joined by hyphens. A ground ball to the shortstop who throws to first base is 6-3. Second baseman to shortstop to first baseman, the standard double play, is 4-6-3. A ground ball the first baseman fields and steps on the bag with himself is 3U, the U standing for unassisted.

A ball caught in the air is written with the letter for how it was hit and the number of who caught it: F9 is a fly ball to right field, L4 a line drive to the second baseman, P5 a pop-up to third base. Plenty of scorers drop the letter and write plain 9. Both are in wide use and neither is wrong. Pick one and hold to it for the whole game, because a card that switches conventions in the sixth inning is a card you cannot read in the spring.

Put the out number in a corner of the cell as you go: a small 1, 2 or 3. It sounds fussy and it is the single habit that most reliably keeps a new scorer from losing their place.

How do you record a hit and a run?

Draw a line from home plate along the bottom right of the diamond toward first base, and write what the hit was: 1B for a single, 2B for a double, 3B for a triple, HR for a home run. Some scorers use one, two, three or four short dashes instead of the letters, which is faster and just as clear.

Then follow the runner. Every time they advance, extend the line along the next side of the diamond, and note what moved them: the number of the batter who drove them in, or SB for a stolen base, or WP for a wild pitch. When they cross the plate, fill the diamond in solid.

That filled diamond is the whole system in one mark. At the end of an inning you count the filled diamonds in that column and you have the runs. At the end of the game you count the column totals and you have the score, arrived at honestly, by you.

The symbols you will use in the first inning

A short working set. The complete reference, including the rarer marks, is on the symbols page linked at the bottom.

A worked half-inning

Top of the first. The leadoff hitter grounds sharply to the shortstop, who throws to first. In row one, column one: 6-3, and a small 1 in the corner. One out.

The second hitter lines a single to left field. In row two: a line from home toward first, and 1B. Some scorers add a 7 to record where it went, which is worth doing and takes no extra time.

The third hitter strikes out swinging. Row three: K, and a small 2 in the corner.

The cleanup hitter doubles into the right-field corner. Row four: the line out to second base, and 2B. The runner from first comes all the way around to score. Back in row two, extend that line around the diamond to home and fill it in solid, then write a small 4 beside it, because the number-four hitter drove him in.

The fifth hitter pops up to the catcher. Row five: P2, and a small 3 in the corner. Side retired.

One filled diamond in column one. The inning was one run, two hits, no errors, and one man left on base — and you can read all four of those facts off the page without having written any of them down as words.