Welcome to Scorekeeping Week

Sometimes people ask us why baseball is our favorite sport. There's no one good answer but it's easy to come up with reasons it appeals to the obsessives, the nostalgics, the fastidious among us. Scorekeeping is just one of the symptoms, in that it is more than just keeping score, it is an institution. The language of scorekeeping, the history and the symbolism, speak to our collective desire to log the proceedings, to set the course of events down on paper.

Buried in the subconscious of the every amateur scorekeeper is the fantasy that someday, years into the future, a researcher will stumble across that mustard-stained scorecard from a Sunday afternoon in Arlington, and use it to construct the final, Rosebud-like paragraph of said scorekeeper’s biography.

The point is, this Scorekeeping Week at Pitchers & Poets. We felt like the act of scorekeeping was both personal enough and broad enough to justify an entire week of posts, from a range of perspectives, from the graphic designer to the professional broadcaster, and all of the fans in between.

This is also the first time we have ever laid claim to a week, labeled it, and singled it out for any official purpose. Seeing as scorekeeping is a universal activity, we hope that you ponder it along with us on your own blog, or better yet in our comments section.

In the next few days you can look forward to interviews with scorebook visionary Bethany Heck and with Seattle Mariners TV broadcaster Dave Sims, as well as reflections from friends of the site, all on the topic of scorekeeping.