Paul Smith developed a nice scorecard for baseball and softball that’s designed for broadcasters, but is also great for P. A. announcers.  We’ve had the chance to look at it and will break it down for you to help you integrate it into your system.

The scorecard has been put into the documents section, but can also be downloaded here:  Paul Smith Baseball Softball Scorecard (PDF)

Size:  11×17, landscape.  Paul has these printed on card stock.  He (and we) recommend double sided so you could also bind them if you like.  If you go single sided, you can still use the back of the pages for additional notes.

Layout:  9 positions, with space to put statistical information.  While averages aren’t necessary for P. A. announcers, home runs are as some will announce the number of home runs a player has hit on the season after the home run.  This provides a nice column for that.  You can also track other stats as necessary as players attempt to reach milestones.

Innings:  12, since most games that do extend past regulation don’t go more than 3, this is a good number.

Substitutions:  Up to two per position.  This should be the minimum, because those who announce Little League or high school baseball, or softball at any level will have temporary replacements such as special pinch runners, re-entries or courtesy runners.  This allows you to track those subs while also leaving a space open for a replacement later in the game.

Pitchers:  7, should be more than enough for 99% of baseball games.  For softball, it’s doubtful you’ll ever reach that number in a game.

Notes:  In addition to date/time, location and weather, there are lines for winning pitcher, losing pitcher, save, next game, time of the game and attendance.  All things that announcers should announce at the end of a game.

Defensive Alignment:  Yes, track the numbers of the players on the other team, including space for plenty of relief pitchers.

End-of-Inning Recap:  Yes, under each inning.

Line Score:  Yes, allows you to give a proper end-of-game recap.

How P. A. Announcers should use it.

Fill out the information in the top left corner of the page.  Enter the date/time, game site (city, state) and stadium name.  You can also add the weather, some announcers like to announce the temperature at game time, this would be a good place to put it.

Before the game starts, you can also write in when the next game will be, who it’s against and what time the game starts.  This way, you can refer to it during the game, or use it as part of your post-game recap.

As the game progresses, you can track the winning pitcher, losing pitcher, and save.  As you get later in the game, you can fill this out.  Since you’re going to have this on two pages, you can decided which page you want to record all of this information on.  When the game ends, you’ll write in the length of the game, and the attendance, if it’s known and should be announced.

The starting line-up is next.  Write in the starting line-up with the number, name and position of each player in the starting lineup.  You can also write the team name above the line-up.  If you prefer to use the proper name, then write it in here, with the nickname in the line score.

Should you get a substitute, you can write them in.  Since pitchers and catchers can have courtesy runners, and those runners are typically the same throughout the game, you can write them in as they enter.  That way, if they come in again in the same role, you’ll already have their name, and have the ability to write in another substitute for that player later in the game.

The last four columns are all optional, but some announcers like to announce how many home runs a player has hit after they hit a home run.  You can fill this in here and have the information at your fingertips.  You can also recap the home runs hit in the game and have information available to you right away.  Other statistics can also be tracked if a player is coming close to a season, team or career milestone.

The pitchers box allows you to track the pitchers.  The only thing we would add is a column for decision that you can cross out as the game goes on and pitchers are no longer on the record.  You can also indicate with a W or L as to whether the pitcher could be a winning pitcher or losing pitcher in the game.  During the game, you can have one pitcher with an L, and another with a W and L to indicate they could become the pitcher of record.

Below the pitchers box is the line score that will help you track the score as the game goes on.  This is helpful for situations in which the scoreboard doesn’t work, but also helps keep track of the final score.  You can enter the team nicknames in these “Team” boxes to give a more familiar feel or a place to remind you of the nicknames.

The end-of-inning recaps are important to help you total everything at the end.  These boxes are wide enough that you could keep track of the inning AND cumulative totals during the course of the game.  Remember, when you put these into the line score at the end of the game, you transpose the errors.  So on the home side of the scorecard, you would put the total number of errors on the visiting side of the line score because the errors are against the defense, while everything else is for the home team.

Some wonder about why defensive alignment would be functional for a P. A. announcer.  It’s not for the live action, but for verifying the defensive team’s lineup.  This way, you have the other team set-up at the top of your page.

The best piece of advice is to write the team in the field to the team that’s batting on the bottom of the page.  That way, you have all the information right in front of you.

This, along with the pitchers box, would be for the opposing team to the team batting.  That way you can count all the stats together, rather than having to flip the page repeatedly.  This is one of those things I absolutely love about this scoresheet.  If the home team is batting, you have the visiting team’s defense and pitchers at the top of the page, and vice versa on the opposite page.

As always, use scoresheets to the best of your abilities.  Don’t worry about doing it a certain way, if you want to keep notes, keep notes.  The beauty of a scoresheet is that most people can decipher them, but you can keep everything you want and still be understood if someone else has to look back through your scoresheet.