Scoring the Games/Scoresheets

I learned how to score a baseball game after seeing an example in an old California Angels program I somehow got ahold of when I was about twelve
years old. In it, lines were used to represent hits. When I began my tabletop sports hobby, this was the method I used until one day, sitting in the
bleachers at Dodger Stadium, I saw the gentleman in front of me keeping score, and after a double was hit, he recorded this with the letter 'D'.
I completely changed my way of keeping score after that day. Like many dice baseball enthusiasts, I used a dot to represent a run scored. A 'W' meant
the batter walked. In short, I made my method of scorekeeping real simple. As the EI instructions said, as long as I understood my entries, that was all
that mattered. In my early game play, each play that resulted in an out was accompanied by a circled number that represented which out it was.

It took a little more than twenty years to wean myself off that, as I figured I could keep track of how many outs there were without those little circled
numbers. Apart from that, there is very little difference between the way my scoresheets look today, apart from the actual sheet itself.

For years, I considered the scoresheet that came with Extra Innings as the best thing ever created. I've run off thousands of copies of that thing in the
first ten years or so of playing. However, in that same time I experimented with other scoresheets along with other methods of keeping score. At one
point, in an effort to speed up stat work, I would cram in the entries without using the columns as innings, but rather as at-bats. I used that method for at
least two years.

By 2000, I realized that the cost to print/copy scoresheets was getting a little steep. For a new project I was starting- an eight team 154 game season,
I made the decision to use spiral notebooks to score the games. I had used looseleaf paper before, and used the same headings for all the columns as
the original EI scoresheet. After creating hundreds of scoresheets using this format, I decided to change things up again, and hit upon the heading format
I have used ever since. I eliminated the headings for extra base hits, stolen bases and caught stealing. I was able to create plenty of scoresheets in a
shorter period of time. Also, a notebook was cheap, compared to printing costs. Ultimately, I did create a scoresheet using excel that I like to use, but
only once in a while have I printed out enough scoresheets to finish a long project. You can download that sheet using the link below. However, I have
to say that notebook paper is where it's at! Recently, a local store had a sale on 70 sheet, college ruled spiral notebooks for 35 cents each (!), so I went
nuts and now have enough to create scoresheets for years to come!

Download The Official Louieball Scoresheet

July 7, 2023