By: Danny Gallagher

Canadian Baseball Network

Boxscore.

As we see it on the agate or six-point pages of print newspapers and in online versions of media outlets, the boxscore is a fascinating presentation of a baseball game: informative, statistical, if not romantic. It’s a story in itself along with a game story, sidebars, notebooks and opinion pieces.

If you did not see the game, then you attempt to find out how the game was broken down in graph form. Don’t we all love statistics?

Englishman Henry Chadwick is largely credited with inventing the box score after he came to America in the 1800s even though his love was cricket. He was a sportswriter by trade and soon became infatuated with baseball and started implementing statistical replays of games while writing up games for various publications.

His first known boxscore adapted from cricket games he recorded was presented in New York’s Clipper newspaper in 1859. Baseball Magazine gave Chadwick’s theory more popularity when it republished his Clipper presentation in 1925.

Chadwick’s boxscore implementation, for the most part, is still used in modern scorekeeping. Chadwick assigned a position such as 3b beside each player’s name, of which only the surname was listed. Example: Donaldson 3b.

Along the way, Chadwick eliminated walks as a means of beefing up a player’s batting average. For historical purposes to this day, a walk remains a plate appearance but is not considered an at-bat. It works neither for or against a batter. At one time, the walk was actually listed as an error to the pitcher. Imagine.

Chadwick served on various baseball rules committee and was referred in some circles as the Father of Baseball because he forged popularity of the sport in its early days. He was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. in 1938. He died in Brooklyn, N.Y., at the age of 83.

For decades, an expanded boxscore has included walks, strikeouts and batting average of a player. Before that happened, only at-bats, runs, hits and RBI were noted beside each name. MLB.com boxscores also include at the top above a hitter’s name BB, SO, LOB, AVG. and OPS, the latter of which is a sabermetric statistic calculated as the sum of a player’s on-base percentage and slugging average.

Wonder what Chadwick would think of this term sabermetric? Bet he would be fascinated.

I remember when I worked in Regina, Sask. for the Leader-Post for four years in the 1980s and we made a point of running the expanded boxscores for every game. Pretty commendable decision for a paper in a small city with no major-league team. Yet, what helped is that we boasted a large stats page. Similar-size papers in Canada would never have done that. Of course, it all comes down to space.

Some papers only run the unloved, unsatisfying, two-lined linescores, which merely list total runs, hits and errors.

As most people know, the boxscore is recorded by the game’s official scorer, a largely anonymous, behind-the-scenes person in the press box, who doesn’t get enough credit.

Some abbreviations you may not understand. E is a simple abbreviation that most people should know. Same for S. LOB stands for Left on Base. Runners in scoring position goes down as RISP. Then there’s GIDP, which stands for grounded into double play.

On Sept. 11 at the Rogers Centre, Brock Holt of the Red Sox pulled off an attempted steal of home, one of baseball’s most exciting but least executed plays. Jays’ lefty Aaron Loup fired to catcher Russell Martin, who tagged Holt before he could reach home plate. Holt would late tell reporters it was his first attempt at trying to snag home.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen anyone try to steal home,’’ said Herb Morell, the official scorer for the game.

Of course, Morell would note the play in his game report as CS as in Caught Stealing. So if you didn’t know what CS meant, you would have to find out from someone or some online source.

Earlier in the game, Holt had stolen third off of Aaron Sanchez, a play that isn’t easy because the catcher has a shorter distance to throw. What Holt did in those two instances made for what was most certainly not a dull game. Everything you thought could happen did. Anybody who paid for tickets like we did got their money’s worth.

The game lasted almost four hours and despite all of the changes, it was a relatively easy game to score for Morell. Both Jays skipper John Gibbons and Boston counterpart John Farrell used eight pitchers each but it was fairly simple to Morell.

“I wouldn’t say it was an easy game but it was a straight-forward game,’’ Morell said. “The pitching changes were fairly simple really because each pitcher stayed in the game for a short stint so it was easy to tally each line. There were very few substitutions.’’

Morell has worked full-time as an administrator since 1982 with the major-junior Ontario Hockey League and is in his fourth season as a Jays’ official scorer.

I first worked with Morell when I covered the Ottawa 67s of the OHL for the Ottawa Journal in the late 1970s. At the time, Morell was working part-time with the OHL. He would send weekly scoring statistics for each OHL team by telex on a print-out. I would type them into the computer and then they would appear in the paper. That was the olden days.

Morell shares official scorer duties at Toronto’s 81 home games with Marie-Claude Pelland-Marcotte and Roger Lajoie, a man of many hats, who is best known as a host on Rogers Sportsnet Fan 590 Sports Radio.

On June 8, 2015, Pelland-Marcotte, 29, became the second female official scorer in MLB history when she worked a Jays-Marlins game in Toronto.

Susan Fornoff, a reporter in northern California, pioneered scorekeeping among females when she worked many games involving the Oakland As and San Francisco Giants in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Pelland-Marcotte worked a number of the Blue Jays’ exhibitions/spring-training games at Olympic Stadium but she really cut her teeth doing games for the independent Québec Capitales from 2008-2014. She used her bilingual skills to make announcements in both official languages.

“The Blue Jays had heard about my work with the Capitales so they asked me to be the official scorer at the games in Montreal in 2014,’’ Pelland-Marcotte said. “Doing Blue Jays’ games is on a larger scale than the Capitales so when I started, it was a little nerve-wracking. It was a great challenge and a little tough.’’

When she isn’t doing games, she’s studying to be an oncologist and expects to graduate in two years. She lives in Toronto with her husband Pete.

Lajoie was the public-address announcer at home games for the Intercounty Baseball League’s Toronto Maple Leafs for 35 years before he moved on after the 2013 season. He has covered Major League Baseball both as a wire-service writer and radio reporter, attending 14 World Series in the process.

“This is my fifth season doing Jays’ games and it’s quite an honour to do them,’’ Lajoie said. “My most memorable game as a scorer I would say was doing the longest game in Jays’ history (Aug. 20, 2014) with David Price the starter for Detroit. It went 19 innings and lasted about six and a half hours.’’

Official scorers are overseen by long-time veteran Phyllis Merhige, Major League Baseball’s vice-president for club relations, who regularly communicates with them and is in charge of evaluating them, their schedules, the appeal process available to players and other facets of official scoring.

Compared to yesteryear, official scorers meet annually to discuss rules, review videotape of plays from the previous season and make an effort to standardize their calls.

As part of their duties, official scorers announce changes in the lineup, substitutions, double switches and a variety of other nuances.

One of the toughest calls is to award a batter a hit or give an error to an infielder/outfielder when the ball glances off his glove or body. Invariably, the official scorer may watch television monitors before making a decision, taking in account a slow roller or a line drive.

“For sure, that is a most difficult play to score,’’ Pelland-Marcotte said about whether to give a hit or an error. “There’s always a little something to look at. You have to take into consideration the velocity of the ball, the speed of the runner, the position of the ball and the fielder and how much he needs to move and in what time.

“You have to look at the field itself, although the Rogers Centre grounds are always dry. You have to look at the environment such as winds, sun, reflectors. Some general principles apply but at the end, each play is different.

“It is a learning curve as to determine accurately which plays are base hits or errors. Even then, some plays will remain controversial.’’

That’s right. Official scorers may bear the brunt of complaints by players, who disagree with their calls. Hitters have been known to shake their bats at the press box, voicing their displeasure.

The first announcement is usually: Start time for today’s game 1:07 p.m. The game’s attendance is duly recorded along with names of umpires. The last duty is usually announcing and recording the length of each game.

I scored two Expos’ games back in the early 1990s when asked to fill in. I made a half-assed attempt at making announcements en francais. Base hit is Coup Sur in French. You basically have to be on duty to see each and every pitch. Washroom visits take place between innings.

“We still do score the games manually including the end of game,’’ Morell said. “MLB.com has a scorer who does the computer-input work based on calls made by the official scorer. Once the official scorer’s report is complete, it is checked against the MLB.com input summary.’’

Back in the early 1990s, official scorers were paid $60 (U.S.) per game. The current rate is probably close to $100.