Also, the sun makes it very difficult to see the screen, so when I got the chance to have power and a roof, I took it. It had been several years since I scored a game from a press box, and now I know why. While its much easier to see the entire field from 40’ up and 150’ away, for me it’s a terrible vantage for a scorer. The perspective for making those close judgment calls is horrible, many times you don’t get the pitch correctly, but worst of all, unless you have a home plate umpire who gives you changes, its really difficult to get them.
It was so strange, I saw something I’d never seen in a game before. In one of the games, the leadoff batter reached, the next batter popped out, then the next hit into a fielder’s choice, force out at 2nd. Suddenly the players on the field ran off, and the team batting ran out to their positions. Not being the OSK, it wasn’t my place to say anything, but I asked the lady who was scoring how many outs she had. Unfortunately, it was the 1st game she’d every scored without help, and she wasn’t at all sure what had taken place, or what to do about it.
The announcer checked her book, then checked mine, and by the time everyone had figgered out that there was indeed something wrong, there was already one out in the next half inning. So rather than start something that might cause controversy, we decided to just keep quiet and let the coaches deal with it.
In the next half inning, I again thought I saw something strange, but it not being my team batting, I thought maybe they’d slipped in a sub and no one had noticed. After an out and a hit, out came our coach for a discussion with the umpires. Turns out that the kid who should have batted in the last inning, had been subbed for defensively, and his replacement thought he’d batted and made the 3rd out, so he did go up. The kid who got the single was called out, and the kid who was up was replaced by the kid who’d gotten the single to get the batting order correct.
Needless to say, up in the booth, we were AFU! I hadn’t made allowances in my program for anything like that happening, the lady who was the OSK was almost in tears, and the announcer was trying his best to get everything straight. Needless to say, it was a complete mess that took us almost 2 innings to get right.
So, what I think I’m gonna do from now on, is stay out of those booths! It gets a bit difficult hauling a table, chair, computer and scorebook, but at least I’ll be where I can tell the umpire to hold on a second while we make sure what’s goin’ on.
