Posted on 07/12/2013 2:07:56 PM PDT by nickcarraway
http://www.onmilwaukee.com/sports/articles/frontrowamytalks.html
Front row Amy does at the MIlwaukee Brewers games
To this day I often keep score when going to a Chicago Cub game. I also take my turn keeping score for my Roy Hobbs Baseball Association team (48 year olds and older league) in the Chicago area.
Here’s a funny story from my first time keeping score. My family of origin went to Cub games since way before I was born in 1960. I started keeping score in 1968 at the age of 7 while at a SCHEDULED Sunday double-header. Yes, they actually had many Sunday double-headers back then. Anyways, I was eating a hot dog with mustard on it while keeping score and as I was taking a bite of the hot dog I bit the tip off the pencil. Needless to say I was spitting out hot dog, bun, pencil wood and lead. It turns out that was the last time I had mustard until I started dating my wife 15 years later. Every time I had mustard it tasted like lead, so I hated it. Not sure why I started eating mustard again - must have been true love.
Not that interesting, but that’s my scorekeeping story....
I guess your wife cut the mustard with you. So, how did you keep score after you bit the pencil? What kind of pencil tastes best? Dixon Ticonderoga #2? b(kind of like a wine?) Did the Cubs ever go on to be in the World Series in 1969? Did you get to meet Ernie Banks? Inquiring minds want to know.
It was a masturbation reference.
1(U)
I used to keep score by hand all the time. But, that was years ago.
When did the backward “K” for “strike out looking” become a scoring symbol? Of course, I see it all the time now, but I can’t remember when I first saw it.
SCENE 2
FBI HEADQUARTERS
(Basement corridor for the X-Files office. There is baseball game on a small TV which is sitting on a cleaning cart in the hall. Vin Scully is announcing for the LA team.)
VIN SCULLY: It’s a gorgeous day for baseball here in the City of Angels and I’m told it is a gorgeous day all over our republic today— from Bangor to Bellflower, from Amarillo to Anchorage the sun is shining and it’s a perfect day to play baseball... That ball is ripped... and it’s going, going, gone...
JANITOR: Morning.
(SCULLY, carrying a heavy load of large files, comes down the stairs, acknowledges the JANITOR at the TV and [for lack of a better word -sorry SCULLY] waddles into the office and drops the large books onto MULDER’s desk. MULDER looks up at her over the top of the record book he is reading. She goes over to the back wall, steps up on the boxes there and gazes wistfully out the window.)
SCULLY: Mulder, it is such a gorgeous day outside. Have you ever entertained the idea of trying to find life on this planet?
MULDER: (still looking at the record book) I have seen the life on this planet, Scully and that is exactly why I am looking elsewhere.
(SCULLY opens a paper bag she is carrying and removes a paper-wrapped frozen dessert. This gets MULDER’s attention.)
MULDER: Did you bring enough ice cream to share with the rest of the class?
SCULLY: (smugly, beginning to eat) It’s not ice cream. It’s a nonfat tofutti rice dreamsicle.
MULDER: (returning to his book) Ugh. Bet the air in my mouth tastes better than that. You sure know how to live it up, Scully.
SCULLY: (stepping down and continuing to eat) Oh, you’re Mr. Live-it-up. Mulder, you’re really Mr. Squeeze-every-last-drop-out-of-this-sweet-life aren’t you? On this precious Saturday you’ve got us grabbing life by the testes stealing reference books from the FBI library in order to go through New Mexico newspaper obituaries for the years 1940 to 1949 and for what joyful purpose?
MULDER: Looking for anomalies, Scully. Do you know how many so-called “flying disc” reports there were in New Mexico in the 1940s?
SCULLY: I don’t care. Mulder, this is a needle in a haystack. These poor souls have been dead for 50 years. Let them rest in peace. Let sleeping dogs lie.
MULDER: No, I won’t sit idly by as you hurl cliches at me. Preparation is the father of inspiration.
SCULLY: Necessity is the mother of invention.
MULDER: The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
SCULLY: (taking another bite) Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.
MULDER: I scream, you scream, we all scream for nonfat tofutti rice dreamsicles.
(MULDER sets the book down and lunges for SCULLY. He grabs her arm and takes a bite of the dreamsicle. The cone breaks and pieces of the dessert splatter down on the book.)
SCULLY: No-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho! (delightful laugh) Mulder!
(She looks closely at the dairy-product-smeared page.)
SCULLY: (accusing) Mulder!? You cheat. I can’t believe that you’ve been reading about baseball this whole time.
MULDER: Reading the box scores, Scully. You’d like it. It’s like the Pythagorean Theorem for jocks. It distills all the chaos and action of any game in the history of all baseball games into one tiny, perfect, rectangular sequence of numbers. I can look at this box and I can recreate exactly what happened on some sunny summer day back in 1947. It’s like the numbers talk to me, they comfort me. They tell me that even though lots of things can change some things do remain the same. It’s...
LOL, I had forgotten about that episode. Great catch.
I used to keep score at the games. Back in the day before video screens at the ballpark, some guys sitting behind me were teasing me about keeping score. But then later in the game, they started asking me what so-and-so hitter did the last time he was up.
Do the guys with the long white coats in Australian rules football hand score still?
Oh.
My son was team manager for his high school team. He cankeep score by hand. Still does at Reds and Cubs games.
ping
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