I’ve actually been thinking about Strat-o-Matic. It definitely helped me pass some summer evenings when I was a kid.
I bought the '82 card set (the year that my Brewers went to the World Series) last year, and I played a bunch of games this spring, when I was missing baseball.
Lots of my pals were Strat-o-Matic fans, but I can’t remember how I got into APBA (probably through my subscription to Baseball Digest).
They attempted to recreate the 2020 season, results are here:
I’m passionate about baseball scorekeeping, as odd as that is. I’ve been keeping score with different systems for over 40 years now since I was 8 . My son and I go to dozens of AAA games a year and we sit next to each other each keeping our own book. During the offseason we play APBA and keep full scorebooks for each game (in part so we can implement pitcher fatigue rules).
So I found it really hard to write a concise post here, but I’m going to limit it to one piece of advise, use the Reisner scorecard and scoring system. When I do serious scoring it’s almost always on a computer, but when I’m sitting in the ballpark this is what I use.
It differs in a couple ways from traditional scoring systems for the better, so if you’re learning from scratch might as well do it right. The main difference between this and the traditional scoring system is you don’t fill in each batter’s path around the bases, instead you show the runners on the bases at the start of every batter. Just put their uniform numbers next to the bases they’re on. If the batter drives in a runner you circle that runner so you know he had an RBI, another improvement over the traditional method. In the center of the diamond put either a number for the out that batter made or a dot if he scored. The result of his at bat goes in the box at the bottom using whatever notation you like. I think this gives you an uncluttered book with the ability to almost exactly recreate the game.
If you really get serious you can score the way I did for a couple years as a volunteer on a data gathering project… actually you really don’t want to.
id,PHI198008270
version,1
info,inputprogvers,“version 7RS(19) of 07/07/92”
info,visteam,LAN
info,hometeam,PHI
info,site,PHI12
info,date,1980/08/27
info,umphome,mcshj901
start,loped001,“Davey Lopes”,0,1,4
start,russb001,“Bill Russell”,0,2,6
start,baked002,“Dusty Baker”,0,3,7
start,garvs001,“Steve Garvey”,0,4,3
start,cey-r001,“Ron Cey”,0,5,5
start,fergj101,“Joe Ferguson”,0,6,2
start,hatcm001,“Mickey Hatcher”,0,7,9
start,thomd001,“Derrell Thomas”,0,8,8
start,welcb001,“Bob Welch”,0,9,1
start,rosep001,“Pete Rose”,1,1,3
start,mcbrb101,“Bake McBride”,1,2,9
start,schmm001,“Mike Schmidt”,1,3,5
start,luzig001,“Greg Luzinski”,1,4,7
start,trilm001,“Manny Trillo”,1,5,4
start,maddg001,“Garry Maddox”,1,6,8
start,bowal001,“Larry Bowa”,1,7,6
start,boonb001,“Bob Boone”,1,8,2
start,carls001,“Steve Carlton”,1,9,1
play,1,0,loped001,??,D7
play,1,0,russb001,??,D7.2-H
play,1,0,baked002,??,3/FL
play,1,0,garvs001,??,53
play,1,0,cey-r001,??,63
play,1,1,rosep001,??,S8
play,1,1,mcbrb101,??,46(1)3/GDP
play,1,1,schmm001,??,W
play,1,1,luzig001,??,K
play,2,0,fergj101,??,K/C
play,2,0,hatcm001,??,63
play,2,0,thomd001,??,K
play,2,1,trilm001,??,7
play,2,1,maddg001,??,S7
play,2,1,bowal001,??,SB2#
play,2,1,bowal001,??,4/P
From the ESPN link:
“A neighbor had a score sheet from the last game between the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers,” says Paul Dickson, the author of “The Joy of Keeping Score: How Scoring the Game Has Influenced and Enhanced the History of Baseball.” “He recalled the whole game inning by inning, just looking at the scorecard. It was almost like watching a rabbi read scripture. Here he was recalling the whole game. It was kind of magic. It’s sort of an analog thing you do in the digital age.”
On the Baseball Almanac site one member reminisced how she’d learned to keep score when she was ten and would do so for “their” team’s games on the radio. When her father would get home from work she’d recount the game to him while mom finished getting dinner ready. It wasn’t until years later that she realized he could have pretty much done the same thing by reading the box scores in the morning paper. It was his way of connecting with her and, he no longer being around, she really missed it.
Technically, you can score any way you want, make your own annotations. Would be best of course to use annotations that everyone else uses, or at least what most people would use.
When I was a kid on a softball team and I didn’t play (most of the time), I was more often than not the scorer. That was simply marking an X when a guy was out and fill in the diamond when he scored. That’s all that was needed for that purpose and nobody showed me more elaborate scoring. I learned that myself going to real (MLB) games and sometimes scoring while watching on TV or listening on radio. Some scoring instructions on cards helped but also TV announcers would explain it at times.
My card looks a bit like what Pixel_Dent posted but a bit more complicated. I usually add the out number wherever it happened and one dot for each RBI. Outs on the bases, I’ll add the player’s number that was at the plate. I make a bar over the box on pitching changes so I know who was his first batter faced. Anything to help me later reconstruct the game.
I’ve had a few WW annotations in my day.
I was on a recreational league softball team a few years ago, and occasionally it would be my job to keep score when my team was batting. All that was really required was to keep track of outs and runs in case the umpire lost count, but I went the extra mile and kept score the proper way.
I took great pleasure in charging the other team with errors. One play in particular sticks out in my mind: our batter hit a long deep fly to left that the fielder nevertheless should have caught. The fielder dropped it, and our batter made it all the way around the bases and scored. My friend on the team said to give our batter a home run, but I insisted that it was a four-base error! Hopefully that scorecard is still sitting in somebody’s office filing cabinet somewhere.
Good stories. Here’s one I hope you’ll enjoy.
A former co-worker, about 25 years ago when her daughter was a kid playing softball, started keeping score of the games. It was her way of saving the memories of her daughter’s games. Year after year, season after season, she kept scorebooks of her daughter’s games. She eventually became an official scorekeeper for her daughter’s leagues. The daughter loved the game and she played through high school. The former co-worker became a bigger fan of the local MLB team, SF Giants.
We’d talk baseball from time to time at work. And she’d present challenging plays and ask how it should be scored. She was good, and she stumped us all the time — not that I was (am) all that smart. I learned a lot from her.
About 15 years ago she saw an ad that MLB was looking for scorekeepers for the Giants. Not official game scorekeepers, but the folks who’d watch the game at the park and update the software for those following on-line — every pitch. To apply she’d have to pass an exam of baseball scoring challenges. She shared the practice exam and it had some tricky situations.
She passed the exam (and she shared that — some very tricky scenarios in it), and she’s been working part-time there ever since. A couple of seasons later she started working the Oakland A’s games too. We live about an hour’s drive south of either ballpark.
So she gets paid to watch live baseball for the Giants and A’s. Of course, she’s working. And during the Giants’ championship years it was especially fun. A bit stressful too at times, because you have to be correct.
But she loves it. And she gets paid.
And all because she learned how to keep score.
I was 9 when I went to my first ball game with my father at the old Shibe Park in Philly. He told me that you must always keep score because the game was slow and scoring kept you in the game and he showed me how. He taught me then and I have always done it. In fact, now I make my own score sheets since once I went to a game and there were none for sale. I record balls, strikes, and foul balls separately and track pitches for the starters only. And of course, track runners and runs. It is nothing at all like the Reiser score described above.
Many years later I visited the baseball Hall of Fame. They had two scorecards on display, one from a NYC sportswriter and one from a Philly sportswriter. I could read the latter like a book and could have narrated the course of the game from it. I could not follow the one from NYC, although with study I imagine I could have figured it out eventually.
One night I went to an Orioles @Mariners game. Seattle won 8-0. The next day I was looking at the score sheet and discovered an amazing fact. The first two Mariners batter in every inning were out. The 8 runs were scored in 4 different innings and all the rallies began with 2 outs. I’ll bet that’s never happened before. I’ve scored some interesting games including a perfect game (Jim Bunning, 1964) a game-ending unassisted triple play (Bruntland, 2009, one of only 2 in MLB history), and a game-ending grand slam (Cash, 1979).
A couple years ago DesertRoomie and I went to an Arizona Fall League game. It’s the best kept secret in Major League baseball. They’re played in six of the Spring Training parks and typically on a weekday evening there might be 500 people in the park so you can sit anywhere you like.
She’s always wanted a souvenir baseball and I told her we were at a perfect game to collect one – she just had to sit in the left side foul area. She didn’t want to to that but during the game someone hit a home run over the left field fence. There are no bleacher seats, just a grass embankment so you can have a sort of picnic if you like. We watched the ball roll to a stop and I said, “Here’s your chance.”
She made her way along the left side and abut the time she made it to the bleacher area, a guy also appeared fro the right side. She easily beat him to it and returned. The last inning she asked, “Who hit that – I think I’ll get it autographed.” I was keeping score so I could answer. She went down to the corner of the dugout and when the game ended, spoke to one of the coaches, then the batter.
She came back but with a pair of autographed batting gloves, not the ball. “He was really interested in that ball so I traded.”
“Hmmm,” I said and looked him up on the MLB site when we got back home. Sure enough, it was his first HR in the AFL. “That ball meant a thousand more times to him than it would have to you – you done good.”
Well, who was it! 
Probably some nobody like Vlad Glad jr.
They do that at Fenway Park for every play. There’s also an error light on the Green Monster. If a play is in doubt, look for the light. It reflects the official scorer’s decision.
My son and I were at a game a few years ago and he was keeping score while we were sitting on the Monster. A camera guy mosied over. I asked him what he was filming and he said “Nothing. It’s not on.” He was holding it at waist height, but I saw the red light and it was pointing at us so I figured he was filming us. I soon forgot about it but a few days later a kid at school asked my son if he was at the game on Sunday. He was there too and had seen us on the giant screen. A dad and his son keeping score at the ballgame. Just like the old days. Except that the seats were $160 each and the beer nearly a buck an ounce. Not like when my dad would sneak us into Fenway by walking in with a Boy Scout group.
But did the Fenway light show who the error was charged to? And, being digital, it could show other decisions as well, like *WP, PB, or FC.
At Wrigley Field, the old-school scoreboard will display an “H”, an “E”, or an “H + E” in case the play involves both a hit and an error. For other rulings (e.g., wild pitch vs. passed ball, or to designate which player made the error), that’s exactly what the new high-tech video boards are for!
Edit: since the new video boards were installed, I can’t remember if the old-school scoreboard still shows the H’s and E’s anymore. I don’t think it does.
You don’t even need boxes, really. If you just have a notebook, a shorthand will summarize the whole game; I’ve often done it that way and have my shorthand all nicely worked out.
T11 - Leibrandt
9 Key 2-2 FO3
1 White 1-2 HBP
2 Alomar 1-0 1B-8 White 2nd
3 Carter 1-2 F8
4 Winfield 3-2 2B-9 White, Alomar Sc 2RBI
5 Maldonado 2-2 P4
TOR 4 ATL 2
B11 - Key
6 Blauser 0-0 1B-9
7 Berryhill 0-0 E6(G6) Blauser 3rd
Smoltz PR Berryhill
8 Belliard 0-1 SAC Smoltz 2nd
Hunter PH Leibrandt
9 Hunter 1-0 G3U Blauser Sc Smoltz 3rd RBI
Timlin R Key
1 Nixon 0-1 BuG3
F TOR 4 ATL 3
Key/Leibrandt/Timlin
11th inning, Game 6 of the 1992 World Series. Easy to write, and you can replicate everything that happened to the last detail, albeit a bit slower than with a proper box. Easy to reconstruct.
The big problem with scoring today is that the scorecards are too small to fit in all the notation. And the glossy paper doesn’t hold ink well.
Another Rizzuto scoresheet entry: “DSI” for “Didn’t See It”.
I don’t find it hard for most games but impossible for All Star Games. So many subs too few lines to put them on and they often don’t tell you who is where in the batting order till they come up.
I just learned today that the “H” and the “E” above Camden Yards’ scoreboard - the letters in “The Sun” - will light up to indicate a hit or error. This is apparently a nod to the Schaefer’s sign above the Ebbets Field scoreboard that did the same.