Keeping Score

You must be thinking, what could this guy possibly be writing about now? Given the topics of my recent posts, this one must be about keeping score in terms of politics, or war, of the crumbling of society as we know it, or where Casablanca falls on my list of all-time great movies.

But no, look at the date.

Today's Opening Day, the best day of the year, the day all hope springs eternal, and this post is about the true meaning of the term "keeping score". It's also about how baseball is so ingrained into American culture that our language is filled with idiomatic expressions that come directly from the greatest game never invented.

 

The French cultural historian Jacques Barzun famously wrote:

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules, and reality of the game.

I turns out that 55 five years later out of disgust with the game, Barzun took back that comment, but hey this is Opening Day, we'll have to leave that for another day. It would be like trash-talking Jesus on Christmas. 

To prove Barzun's original comment, I'm constantly impressed by my equally French boss's ability to rattle off baseball terms as if she had been a student of the game at the Sorbonne. 

It turns out that she really can't stand baseball and more than likely has no idea that much of her excellent command of American vernacular directly channels "the National Pastime."

So I get a little smile whenever she says things like "let's touch base" or "I'll take a rain check" or that something is "hit or miss."

Here's the most comprehensive list I've found of common baseball expressions that have made their way into everyday American English.

Strangely enough, "keeping score" is not on the list. 

You keep score in other games (perhaps that's why this particular expression didn't make the list), but at least in my experience, no other sport is so compulsively focused on recording the minutest detail of every single moment of every single contest as baseball.

To give you an example, I'll take a random Major League player from the past and a random date from sometime in his career and look up how he did that day during the game. Pulling a name out of a hat I'll pick Nate Colbert (never heard of him), a three-time all-star first baseman and outfielder who had a ten-year career playing in the late sixties and seventies for five different teams. Now let's pick a random date, say June 25, 1973, and see how he did. By the way, baseball terms that have become idiomatic expressions in everyday American English from here on are highlighted in red.

The following is from the estimable source on all things baseball, the website BaseballReference.com:

OK, from the box score, we see that on June 25, 1973 as a member of the San Diego Padres, Nate Colbert went 0 for 4 in four plate appearances with one RBI, I'm guessing by driving in a run on a ground ball, in a 3-2 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers. In the field he played first base and recorded ten put outs, (to be expected at that position). 

Let's see if we can do better. 

Just as I suspected, from the play-by-play, batting cleanup, or fourth in the lineup, in the bottom of the first inning off Dodger pitcher Claude Osteen with runners Dave Roberts (not to be confused with the current manager of the Dodgers) at second and Jerry Morales at third, Colbert hit a ground ball to Dodger shortstop Bill Russell who threw Colbert out at first. Morales scored on the play, accounting for Colbert's RBI, while Roberts remained at second. 

In the bottom of the fourth inning with no one on base, Colbert grounded out to third.

In the bottom of the sixth, Colbert grounded out to third again, advancing this time advancing Jerry Moralez to second base.

My son,
stepping up to the plate. 

In the bottom of the eighth with two outs and Roberts on first, Colbert grounded out to Claude Osteen, which ended the inning. 

Colbert unfortunately didn't bat with two outs in the bottom of the ninth in that game. Had he failed at that of course, either the ballgame's over, or it goes into extra innings.

Had Colbert played a decade later, we could do even better as pitch-by-pitch accounts became standard in official baseball scorekeeping and we would know how many balls and strikes he had in the count before putting the ball into play. If he had played even later, we'd be able to know out what kind of pitches those were such as fastballs,  curveballs,  knuckleballs or screwballs.

Now I'm sure at this point you must be saying, "who gives a shit?"

Well, let me explain.

Um, I can't really explain, other than to say that out of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, in one of them, this information will come in handy one day. Like the tie-in to my previous post?

It also goes to illustrate the obsessive nature of baseball which in turn illustrates the nature of the term "keeping score" when it doesn't apply to the game of baseball. 

It's not generally a compliment when someone accuses you of keeping score.

Unless you're doing it in the ballpark that is, which is what I'll be doing this Sunday with the family.

And as is my annual custom on this great day, I close with the two happiest words in the English language:

Play ball!