Creative scorecard suggestions for baseball
In addition to tracking the typical stats from a baseball game on a scorecard, why not add some fun stuff too.
Pregame notes
- Date (oddly enough, there’s no field on the Wrigley scorecard for date)
- Time game is scheduled to start
- Usher’s name
- Comments on the season win loss record for each team
- Have people in your group guess how many strikeouts the home starting pitcher will get
Pregame notes about what happens on the field
- Who threw out the first pitch
- Who sang the National Anthem
- Umpire names and positions
- Weather
- Field conditions
Player notes
- Name
- Number
- Position
- Players’ brief season stats (batting average, HR). It’s fun to look back at your card see that Andre Dawson was hitting .314 at that point in the season.
- Nicknames. Ask people around you for nicknames for certain players
- Creative heckling you yell (or hear) for particular players
- Comments on player’s uniform
- What theme songs are played for each player (Green Acres was once played for Shawn Green. Classic. There’s nothing like ripping on a player though a pipe organ.)
About you and your group
- People that you are with at the game
- What fan paraphernalia you are wearing and your party is wearing (e.g. Matt: Cubs hat, 2003 division champions shirt)
- Seat location
- Comments on seat location
- Time you arrived at ballpark
- How you got to the ballpark
Fun extras
- Color of uniforms (à la Pat Hughes style)
- Attendance number
- Who sang the 7th inning stretch. How did they do?
- Notes on goofy people around you that you don’t know. e.g. Howie Mendell sighting four rows up. May have accompanying sketch.
- Spill some food on your scorecard. Circle the mark and note what it is.
General tips
- Bursts. Lots of bursts.
- Circles. Lots of concentric circles around important stuff.
- Bold some of your writing.
- Write big for important items.
- Write small for other items.
- Bring a clipboard to make writing easier. Writing on your thigh becomes difficult after two hours.
- Bring a mechanical pencil. You can write with the wooden pencil they give you. In fact, it’s encourage, because it’s fun to write with the brand new Cubs pencil. That’s the whole point of all these suggestions is to have fun. However, the point on the wooden pencil will last for about one inninng and then will become dull. A mechanical pencil will keep both your writing and mind sharp for nine-plus innings.
Notes during innings. Right alongside your stats, write down some of the following
- What you ate and when
- What other people with you ate and when
- What time people in your party arrived, and what time they left (they better had not left before the end of the game!)
- Weather changes
- When the lights go on (if a day game)
- Bets on what will happen during the game
- Times when the crowd stands up
- Extra details on game play, such as “incredible catch”, “outta the park homerun!”
Postgame notes
- Time game ended
- Game final score. Nice and bold.
Postpostgame notes from next day’s newspaper and website articles
Most people think that the scorecard cannot be written on after the game. That it has to be a capture of only what you wrote DURING the game. Hogwash. The scorecard is your capsule memory of the game. Feel free to add more to it at home after the game.
- Notes on records set
- Special insights into the game
- Stats you missed
- Other things you just forgot to write down during the game
- Embellish your existing notes. Make certain items more bold. Add more bursts. Then add some more bursts on top of that. It’s fun to look back at a crazy complex scorecard.
My own notes/ideas
It would be fun to make up my own 8.5×11 template for a scorecard where it has fields for these items. Or at least the list of suggestions.
It would also be fun to have a site where people can photograph or scan in their scorecards and have them posted to the site. Actually, people could xerox their scorecard and mail it in too. Then the scorecards would get indexed by game date and team. Then people could go back and look at scorecards from the game they went to. Or even look at scorecards of famous games. World Series games would go bonkers with submissions (I think).