Image by sarowen via Flickr
Summertime is filled with many trips to the ballpark, whether it is a little league or a major league game. Fans sit back and enjoy their afternoon with a nice cold beverage and their favorite ballpark snack. People come either for the love of the game or to cheer on family and friends. Games usually run pretty smoothly until there is a contested call or something in the scorebook doesn’t add up.
The scorebook could be one of the most overlooked aspects of the game. It plays a vital role because sometimes the electronic scoreboard just isn’t right or the umpire had made a mistake.
That little pad of paper keeps track of substitutions, balls, strikes, hits, stolen bases, errors, and strikeouts. I have spent many days at the ballpark and have even had the “pleasure” of keeping the scorebook. It is a task that no one really wants to do because it requires so much attention. If you look away for just one second, you can miss whether a pitch was a ball or strike. It requires a lot of discipline and help from fellow teammates and coaches.
Even though it is not the most fun aspect of a ball game, it is what coaches look to after the final pitch is thrown. It gives statistics and shows patterns that otherwise could go unnoticed. After every college softball game I played in, the coach always brought out the scorebook to review the game and find areas where we, as a team, could improve.
As you can see, paper-based communication is second nature. Paper plays vital roles in areas we recognize but may never truly think about. With the advancement of technology, many scorebooks have gone electronic. No matter how reliable an electronic may seem, there is always the possibility for something to go wrong. It’s hard for something to go wrong on the paper version, unless the scorekeeper just isn’t paying attention.
No matter how advanced out society becomes, we mustn’t forget how to use the good old pen-and-paper. We don’t want future generations to become completely reliant on electronics because if the power goes out or the battery dies, future generations still need to be able to keep track the old-fashioned way.
Do you think electronic scorekeeping will eventually replace paper scorekeeping or do you think paper scorekeeping will always play a role in baseball, even if it is just there as a backup in case something goes wrong with the electronic version?
