Dime Scorecards Were Worth Something

It was a universal ritual at every ballpark, major league or minor. Fans would buy a scorecard for as little as a dime when they arrived, and by marking up little boxes that demarcated each inning they kept a running account of the game.

The arcane system could look like hieroglyphics if you weren’t versed in it, but for many it quickly became as familiar as the alphabet. A series of hand-drawn lines approximating the shape of a baseball diamond with accompanying numerals described the flow of play. A grounder to the shortstop who threw the ball to the first baseman for an out, for example, would be entered as 6-3; a triple would be recorded with a truncated rendering of a diamond that stopped at third base.

In the midst of a crowd, it was an utterly private undertaking. It was a way of making a public ballgame personal—and to take that game home with you.

The system of scorekeeping still exists, but “I’d guess no one under 50 does it and even then only a few,” said Paul Sullivan, past president of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. There are so many ways to keep up with the flow of ballgames these days, including pitch-by-pitch summations and instantaneous metrics available on your phone, and so many purposeful distractions at the ballparks, from blaring music and between-innings contests to attention-grabbing gimmicks on giant scoreboards, that keeping score by hand is nearly a lost art. Mr. Sullivan said that he still does it, but “I’m a dinosaur, I guess.”