How to score a game

A scorecard is a diary of a ballgame written in a shorthand that has barely changed in a century. Learn it once and you can reconstruct every play of a nine-inning game from a single sheet of paper. Here is the whole language, in plain English — the same notation our engine prints on every card, so this teaches you to keep your own and to read ours.

Start with the nine gloves

Everything is built on the fielders, and each one is a number. You never write a fielder’s name — you write his position, and the position is a digit you will memorize in one game.

1–9

every fielder is a number: 1 pitcher, 2 catcher, 3 first base, 4 second, 5 third, 6 shortstop, 7 left, 8 center, 9 right. Every other mark is built from these.

Six is the shortstop, not the third baseman — the numbers run around the infield out of order, and that is the one thing to burn in. Everything below is spelled with these nine digits.

An out is a sentence of gloves

When a batter makes an out, you write the fielders who made it, in the order the ball touched their gloves. A grounder to short thrown to first is 6-3. A ball caught on the fly is the catch letter plus the fielder: F8is a fly to center. The out tells its own little story — you can read a whole inning’s defense back off the page.

6-3

an out travels glove to glove and you write the relay: 6-3 is shortstop to first, 5-4-3 a double play third-to-second-to-first.

one fielder made the out alone — 3U is the first baseman stepping on the bag himself, no throw.

K / ꓘ

K struck out swinging; a backward ꓘ struck out looking — the batter watched strike three go by.On our card the direction is a rendered glyph, not a letter in the data.

F8 · P6 · L7

the ball caught in the air, with the fielder who caught it: F8 a fly to center, P6 a pop to short, L7 a liner to left.

DP 6-4-3

two outs on one ball, written as the relay that turned it.

Reaching base traces the diamond

Each plate appearance sits in a box with a tiny diamond in it. When a batter reaches, you trace his path around that diamond — one leg for a single, two for a double — and you note how he got on.

1B 2B 3B HR

single, double, triple, home run — trace the diamond as far around the bases as he ran.

BB · IBB · HBP

walked · walked on purpose · hit by the pitch.

FC 6

safe, but only because the fielder (here 6) chose to retire a teammate instead — a batter on base for no one.

on base because a fielder botched it, with that fielder's number — E5 is the third baseman's error.Our card prints the fielder's number on every error as of 2026-07-22.

Giving yourself up

Not every out is a failure. A sacrifice is a deliberate out that advances or scores a runner, and it gets its own mark so the box score can credit it.

SF · SH

sacrifice fly · sacrifice bunt — he made an out on purpose to move or score a runner (SF8 names the outfielder who caught it).

On the bases

Runners move between pitches too — stealing, or advancing on a ball the pitcher or catcher lost. Scoring by hand you write these in the runner’s lane. Our card shows the movement but does not print a letter for it; where that is true, the note says so, because a card should never imply it saw something it did not.

SB · CS

stole the base · caught trying to.Our card shows a steal only as an extra lit leg on the runner's diamond — no SB mark. Scoring by hand, write SB2 (stole second).Not printed as a mark on our card — see the note.

WP · PB · BK

a runner advanced on a pitch in the dirt · one the catcher should have held · an illegal move by the pitcher.These move the runner on our card but print no mark of their own.Not printed as a mark on our card — see the note.

The marks that are ours

A few things on our card are not traditional ink — they are how a computer that reconciles every play chooses to show it. Every one has a definition, because a glyph with no key is a black box, and we don’t keep those.

◇ filled

the little diamond in the box fills in when that batter came all the way around to score.

● out number

a small circled 1, 2, or 3 in a runner's box — which out of the inning he was, when he was retired on the bases.

RBI dots

one dot per run he drove in — our tally, where a paper book inks a boxed count.

◻ corner box

the small box in the corner of each cell holds the batter's jersey number — the field a paper book never gives you, for tracking mid-game substitutions.

A real half-inning, mark by mark

Here is the top of the first from Minnesota at Boston, May 23, 2026, scored the way you would keep it in the stands. Jovani Morán is pitching; the Twins bat around the top of the order.

1B — Buxton lines a single to center and later comes around to score; his diamond fills in.
1B — Larnach singles to left; he scores too.
2B — Martin doubles to left, driving in a run (one RBI dot), takes third, and is stranded there when the inning ends — his diamond does not fill.
SF8 — Bell lifts a sacrifice fly to center; an out (the first of the inning), but a run scores and he gets the RBI.
6-3 — Clemens grounds to short, thrown to first. Two out.
K — Caratini strikes out. Three out, side retired.

Two runs, three hits, one man left on base — and you can read every bit of that back off six marks. That is the whole trick: the cardis the game, compressed.

Now go keep one

Print a blank card and take it to a game — the free printable card (PDF) has the full key on the back, or generate one with tonight’s projected lineups already filled in. When you want to check your work, every game we score is public and reconciled to the official line at the scorecards. And if you want the paper scorebooks and apps worth owning, the Scorekeeping Shelf reviews them honestly.