Reporting on turnovers and missed kicks in high school football

You can't win. Pick a side and go with it.

I tried keeping football stats for the East Texas H.S. district I covered in the '80s. I went with each school's local paper beat writer's stats. I thought things were going swimmingly until the school I covered played a team outside of our circulation area. The reporter covering the opponent had that team's best rusher with 50+ more yards than I had. I went back over the totals, again and again, and even giving the benefit of the doubt on ever carry, it could have only been about 20 more yards.

So I stopped doing district stats. I'd rather not do them then include something grossly innacurate.

In other words, if the schools' scorebooks are BS, don't use them or at least say that they gave them a hit on what most reasonable people (definition of porn, remember) say was an error.

 

One example, from today, of the needlessly negative constructions I'm talking about:

Diane Roy fails to reclaim wheelchair gold

Really? She "failed" to reclaim it?

Unless you're talking about a super-overwhelming favourite who screws up hugely, "Defending wheelchair champ nipped at finish" or something of that sort would suffice.

 

shots - i went to a HS baseball game many years ago. in the fourth inning, with a runner on first, hometown player A hits a ball the right side of the infield, which strikes player B while on his way to second for the final out of the inning.

after the game, the hometown coach says, "wow, little johnny douchenozzle pitched one helluva game. first no-hitter we've had in three years."

i say: "coach, it wasn't a no-hitter."

we debate the point for 10 minutes before finally i say "sorry coach, but you really need to look at your book. that was a one-hitter and that's what you'll be reading in the morning."

what would have you done, shots? i think you know what i did.

 

you dropped an f-bomb on his ass, tommy. ask a tough one next time.

 

This kid happened to be the neighbor of the publisher or the biggest advertiser in town. Bend over and take it.

 

Softball, dude.

You're talking about a misinterpreted rule there. There's no argument; nobody gets to make up new rules.

That's different than a disagreement on a hit/error judgment call.

BTW, that's just the type of thing which some clueless scorekeeper probably DID score as a fielder's choice, the coach saw it and didn't know any better himself.

 

I don't understand what about TP's post above makes the game a one-hitter (unless the runner was on first because of a base hit, which it doesn't address.)

 

If you hit a ground ball and it strikes a baserunner, the runner is out ... and the hitter gets a single. It's a scoring rule.

 

I did not know that. I would have guessed a FC.

 

Yeah, it would seem like that should be the call.

This was one of the advantages of being a league scorekeeper at 13.

 

I wouldn't have recognized you as an official scorer at that age.

 

It's how you can have six hits in an inning without scoring a run. Great trivia question to throw out sometime.