Miles's blog

Number 12. Today I had Office Depot make me scorebook number 12. I have kept score at baseball games since I was 10 or so. At 15 I started doing so in bound scorebooks, so I could keep a record of every game. Well, not every game. When the office all went and sat in the Rockpile I did not keep score. That was a social event, not really going to a ballgame. But most every game I keep score.

For a while I used a commercial scorebook, but they stopped making those. Now I use one of my own creation. Call it weird, nerdy, obsessive, what have you, I like it. Keeping score keeps my head in the game. When I am there alone my scorebook in some ways is my companion. Yeah, weird, nerdy, obsessive and a little creepy. I get that.

I am writing a book about my scorebooks and the games I have been to. Here is a draft of the first chapter. Remember, if you choose to read this, that this is a first draft. My writing ordinarily goes through many drafts. When I worked on appeals for the Attorney General’s Office I regularly created 15 drafts before filing a brief. I skimmed this draft before putting it online and I know it needs work. However, if you are at all interested in how I came to keep score take a look. The rest of the book takes a look at the games I attended as reflected in my scorebooks. That is way more interesting.

At this point my scorebooks are reflections of different phases of my life. There are different notations reflecting things that happen at games sometimes. Fights, both on the field and in the stands, names of people I went to the game with, different handwriting when others helped me out. Forty-one years is a long time. I don’t know exactly how many games are in the books because the number of pages varies, but it is probably around 400. Of course most are since the Rockies arrived in 1993, but there are playoff games in New York and a smattering of games from other cities in the desolate years when I lived in Denver with no major league team.

Tonight will be the final game in the old book; tomorrow the first game in the new one. The tradition continues.

# posted by Miles Madorin : 2:02 PM