Keeping Score Read Online Free Page B

squares meant. They told what each batter had done. "4-3" written in the square opposite the batter's name meant that a ground ball had been hit to the second baseman (4) who had thrown it to the first baseman (3) for the out.
    Jim could look at his score sheet and see exactly what had happened in any inning. Which was way better than just keeping it in your head, because when you were trying to remember what happened in a game, only the big exciting plays came to mind. But Maggie knew that baseball was often a game of little things—the pitcher falling behind in the count, the good throw to keep a runner from advancing, the slide to break up a double play—and those were hard to keep track of. Jim's score sheet didn't have every single thing written down, but the things that were there could really help you remember.
    "Can I come again tomorrow?" she asked. "Will you show me some more?"
    "Sure," Jim said. "Tomorrow's a night game. I'm off-duty, but I'll meet you here anyway. If your ma says it's okay."
    Maggie let her eyes twinkle at him. "I'll ask my dad."
    "Ha! Okay, Miss Maggie-o. And one other thing. Dodgers play tomorrow night too, but we'll be listening to the
Giants'
game—got it?"
    "That's all right," Maggie said. She knew the Dodgers would be on the other radio; she could find out the score whenever she wanted. Then she frowned. "But that means we'll have to have your radio turned up, won't we? So we can both hear it? The other guys—"
    "Hmm." Jim looked thoughtful. "Yeah. Well, I'll figure something out. You just worry about learning those position numbers, okay?"
    Maggie trotted home after giving Charky a hug. She already knew that she wasn't going to tell Joey-Mick about learning how to score a game, not yet. Not until she could do a whole game all by herself. Maybe she would just sit there in front of the radio, writing stuff down, and when he asked what she was doing,
then
she would tell him.
    She might even teach him, too. If he asked very nicely.

    Jim had brought a long extension cord to the firehouse so they could put his radio on the sidewalk a good few
yards away from the drive. George expressed both astonishment and disapproval over Maggie's listening to the Giants' games, but she assured him it was only so she could learn to keep score herself, "and then I'll be doing the Dodgers' games, okay, George?" He had given his grudging approval. Not that she needed it, but she didn't want him to be mad at her.

    So much to learn about keeping score! Maggie was torn between wanting to know all of it
now
and the fun of discovering a new thing or two or three every day.
    Jim showed Maggie how to list the batting order, each team on a separate page. Then you wrote the inning number, one through nine, across the top, and drew lines down the page to make narrow columns for each inning. Those vertical lines and the pale blue horizontal lines printed on the page formed boxes, each no bigger than her thumbnail.
    When a player batted, you wrote the play down in the little box opposite his name, in the column for the correct inning. Special numbers and letters were used for different plays. For example, Jim taught her that "K" stood for strikeout. There were two ways for a player to strike out—by swinging and missing, or by
not
swinging at a pitch that was called a strike by the umpire. For a swing and a miss, you wrote a normal K. But for a called strike, you used a backward one: K.
    It was a handy way to tell the difference, but more than that, Maggie loved how the backward K looked so strange on the page—askew and confused, just like a batter befuddled by a pitch.

    "Strikeout looking is worse than strikeout swinging," Maggie declared. "At least swinging, you know the guy tried."
    "Yeah," Jim agreed, "except when the ump makes a bum call—when it shoulda been a ball."
    A strikeout was easy to record, just one letter. But for some plays, Maggie had to squeeze a lot more into the little