I had a realization :: For all this research and talk I’ve been doing about baseball scorekeeping, I’ve never kept score of a baseball game myself. Last year I had a similar realization and ordered beautiful scorecards from the Eephus League of Baseball Minutiae, but they’ve been just sitting on my shelf. So, after seeing Roger Angell’s scorecard, I decided to go back and watch Game 6 of the World Series (I only got home for the 9th inning), attempting to keep score of the game along the way. I wanted to see what it felt like to document those amazing moments - if they carried as much weight with a pen as they do watching that game live.
- Its insanely difficult to keep score. I had to pause the game several times to look up how to document simple plays in baseball that happen often. Fielder’s choices created a mess of my scorecard. Substitutions, especially double switches when a player doesn’t come in at the same position, are insane. What’s the difference between a flyout and a popout?
- I’ve never found myself more captivated by a baseball game. Not because I knew the potential outcome, but because of the level of attention it required for me to actively keep score. I wasn’t even logging balls / strikes.
- I think there’s some level of forecasting that comes through in keeping score. Logging every play, you can start to feel momentum through your pen. You feel the momentum of an inning. Of course, this can just as easily be killed by a double play or a guy watching a called 3rd strike, but I really felt like I was in touch with the swings of the game as I logged it.
- I love scanning the scorecard in hindsight. You can see when it got exciting. Homeruns jump out at you. You can watch pitchers collapse. Errors carry an all new weight when see the damage they inflict after what should have been the third out.
- There’s certain things that can’t be replicated on a scorecard. David Freese’s triple carried far more weight than any other hit in the game, yet it appears on the scorecard as just another hit.
- David Freese’s HR is beautiful in its isolation of the 11th inning column.
I love this statistical representation of Game 6. This website uses a variety of statistics to compute the odds of a team winning the game at any given moment. As David Freese game to the plate in the bottom of the 9th, the Cardinals chances of winning the game had dipped to 7% (though disappointingly, the resolution of this chart is only at a per batter level, I would love to know what the percentage was when he had dropped down to his last strike).
I think this graphic is a great representation of the narrative I am looking to convey in the moment. When people understand that their team only has a 6% chance of winning the game, suddenly the AB carries much more weight. Even looking at this in hindsight, you can deduce that this was one exciting game.
Source: fangraphs.com
World Series, Game 6
Two nights ago, I returned home from a school event just in time to flip on the World Series in the 9th inning. I had been checking the score on my way home, and just wanted get home in enough time to see the Texas Rangers celebrate their first World Series victory. I flipped on the TV, poured myself a nice glass of whiskey, and sat down in my favorite chair, expecting to be in bed in the next 15 minutes….
What happened next was impossible to fathom. The Cardinals down to their last strike in the 9th, tied the game with one swing of the bat by a guy I’ve never even heard of until this World Series, David Freese. The game went to extra innings, and almost immediately, Josh Hamilton answered with a homerun that instantly quieted the St Louis crowd. Simultaneously, Tony LaRussa, the manager of the Cardinals, dropped his head and shoulders in a way that seemed to suggest he didn’t think his team had an answer for Texas this time. But they did. Once again, down to their last strike, this time it was Lance Berkman who kept the Cardinals season alive, taking advantage of a weird defensive positioning by the Rangers and dropping a hit in to tie the game and send it to yet another inning. (I think it was at this point that my roommate came out, confused at the sounds of me screaming at the TV and the nonstop chimes of text messages of friends watching around the country). And when the Rangers failed to score in the 11th, and David Freese, the hometown hero, leading off for the Cardinals, it was pretty obvious what had to happen. Freese took the ball out to the deepest part of the yard, while Joe Buck simply stated “We’ll see you tomorrow night.”
It was arguably the greatest World Series game ever played, which in my opinion, automatically makes it the greatest baseball game ever played. I didn’t even have a dog in the fight, yet for those 2 hours, I was more invested in this baseball game than any other game I’ve ever watched.
I’ve attempted to collect a few “artifacts” from the game that I think might inform my thesis moving forward. Posts to follow…
