Nelly Kelly and Her Pouts

Eric hooked us up with some sweet company tickets to the Rangers/Orioles game last night. So, out to The Ballpark we went for a night of peanuts, foot long hot dogs, and America's game. Walt Whitman.

It was actually our first trek to the ballpark this year. We usually hit a couple of games a year (of course, when the Yankees are in town) when the weather gets cool enough.

I read an article in the paper when the baseball season started describing only two types of baseball fans: those who keep score and those who don't. And yes, I am in the former group. I would like to do a statistical analysis to figure out the percentage of fans that fit into that category. I figure that it's less than one percent. I've probably been to thirty pro games in my lifetime and I don't think I've ever seen anybody else with a pencil and a scoresheet.

I keep score for a myriad of reasons: I've briefly described baseball as an alchemic melding of numerology, phsyics, geometry, and symbology. Keeping score is a matter of taking all that and encoding it onto a piece of paper.

One of the most important lessons I've learned through this exercise is how open to interpretation the game of baseball can be. I understand the politics of a home scorer ruling an error a hit; but since my hobby is void of those external influences, I can score the game as I see it. I don't care if my box score doesn't mirror the published and official version; I find solace in the fact that mine is different; that's what makes the game special.

And of course it happened last night. In the bottom of the seventh, the catcher hit a ball between third and short. Tejada should have put a full glove on it but instead just put a blow glove on the ball and fumbled it. The scorer ruled it a "ground ball with eyes"; I ruled it E6.

I didn't discover the discrepancy until this morning when I read the box score and the paper gave the Rangers one more hit than I scored. Figuring that must've been the only point of contention (heck, the Rangers don't hit the ball that often), I looked for that in the play-by-play first. Sure enough, it was officially ruled an infield hit.

I can't think of a better way to end this entry but with pictures. Thanks Eric. You save me from having to come up with something clever - probably some sort of joke involving Palmeiro, Sosa and a massive amount of steroids and cork.