Dear dimwit on the phone

Had a baseball coach who used to call in and say every one of his players -- including the ones who weren't very fast on the basepaths -- had three or more steals in just about every game. One kid had eight steals once. They wound up with something like 35 steals total once. In a seven-inning game.

Turns out he was crediting a passed ball/wild pitch as a steal.

 

Off-topic: One of my college roommates was a HS QB. Just to piss him off one time, we introduced him to somebody else as a QB who "completed 52 percent of his passes, including handoffs."

Back on topic: We had a softball scorekeeper at one of the little schools who also thought every time somebody put the bat on the ball it was a hit. Linescore: 1 run, 32 hits, 9 errors ...

 

On the subject of softball, I have a hard time crediting a steal to a runner who advances to second, because there's a runner already on third and the catcher doesn't want to risk allowing a run. Maybe, it's a steal, but I fail to see why it's really not defensive indifference.

 

What's worse are those scorekeepers, usually parents, who won't give an error -- either after their son/daughter reached base on one, or they made one in the field -- for anything.

Had one parent when I was working at another paper call me up to say his son should have gone 3 for 3 in the game I covered the night before. I had him down as going 1 for 3, reaching on two errors. Guy said I was costing his kid a scholarship and all that jazz. I told him to call the official scorer, who I had grown to know/respect pretty well in the time I was at this paper, and talk to him. The scorekeeper and I both agreed the kid was 1 for 3, so that's what went in the paper.

Dad said he was canceling his subscription, so I offered to transfer him to a person that could help with that. He said 'no thanks,' and hung up.

 

heh, Good times. I work as a basketball scorer as a side gig, so thankfully, I don't have to deal with many judgment calls like that from the opposing scorer - it's pretty obvious if something is a 2, a 3, free throw, etc. However, I do have to tell them sometimes that they can't cheer from the table, which goes over as well as you'd think it would.

 

I remember the scorekeeper from my previous post kicking someone out of the press box because they kept cheering. He warned the dude twice that there was no cheering, and if he didn't shut up he'd be scoring the game outside.

It was pretty cold that day, too, which made it even more awesome.

 

In the game I was covering last night, the home team was winning by 3 in double OT. With about two seconds left, the visiting team grabbed a rebound off a missed FT and immediately called timeout, but the clock kept running and the horn sounded. Officials conferred, decided the timeout came before the buzzer sounded, and told the scoreboard operator to put 0.9 on the clock. As she inputs it, 9.0 goes up on the clock, so she starts to change it. While she was in the process of changing it, several home fans behind the scorer's table start screaming about the mistake.

Official scorer turns around and yells, "GOD DAMN IT, SETTLE DOWN AND SHUT UP!!! SHE'S FIXING IT!!!" The looks on the faces of the fans were priceless. I couldn't stop laughing.

 

haha, Nice! I'm in favor. I'm somewhat lucky in that it is a smaller gym - there are no seats behind me, and to the left and right are the benches, with about five or six rows behind them. All of the stands are on the opposing side of the gym.

 

There's one worse ... scorekeepers that give sacrifices for moving a runner over on a ground out. Yes, the batter sacrificed himself, but there's no provision in the rule book that allows that to be called a sacrifice, just sacrifice bunts or sacrifice flies.

 

Dear youth league coordinator,

We've run this same area note every 3-6 months for you for at least three years now. Your league clearly isn't adding any other towns in the county. I highly doubt that our removal of a line about new divisions with new dimensions of play is going to hurt you.

Oh, and can the passive-aggressive threats of mass subscription cancellations. It's childish.

Join a Star Trek away team while wearing a red shirt,

E. Row

 

Got this gem the other night:

Girls Hoops Coach: "[Insert name] had nine points."
Me: "How were those points scored? Two's, threes, free throws..."
Coach: "The girl shot 3-18, it's fucking embarrassing. I don't want any of that in the paper. It's pathetic."

Wish granted.

 

Had a team one time call in a volleyball match with three more assists than the team had points. When I called the coach back and told her that we weren't running her team's game in the paper and why, it got fixed pretty quick.