Hits for everyone

Baseball is a game of statistics and numbers. There are wins, losses, runs, hits, errors, ERA and RBI. We know that 300 wins or 500 home runs usually gets you in the Hall of Fame, Joe Dimaggio had a 52-game hitting streak, Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs and Ted Williams was the last player to hit .400 for a season.

Numbers are what makes baseball fun for the fanatics, from historians to the fantasy league players. They also are what baseball players and coaches obsess over, far more than they should and moreso than players and coaches in other sports.

I can't recall ever hearing a running back question a statistician by saying, "I had 75 rushing yards, not 72. You're cheating me." Or a basketball coach say, "The statistics are wrong. John Doe, our point guard, only had eight turnovers in that game instead of nine. They should have given that one turnover to our shooting guard, Thumbs Skurcenski, because he should have caught that pass from Doe that ended up going out the gym door and into the concession stand."

But in baseball, it seems everyone questions the official scorer. Everyone thinks they or their guy is getting cheated. It's that way from the major leagues to the Frontier League. It's reached the point that I'm wondering if some players and coaches forget that the only statistics that are worth a damn at the end of the night are those found in the standings, under wins and losses.

I've covered major league games in which players called the pressbox and tried to get the official scorer to change an error to a hit or vice versa. Major league infielder Orlando Cabrera is famous for calling a pressbox twice during the same game a few years ago.

My best official scoring story doesn't involve a player or a coach. There was a game that had one of those unusual and seemingly hard-to-score plays. However, the play in question is described as a scoring example in the Baseball Rulebook. A couple of days after the game, a team executive demanded the official scorer change the ruling from a fielder's choice to a single because the player involved was having a bad season. The guy needed a hit. The scorer said he couldn't do that because the rulebook clearly states the play is scored a fielder's choice. The executive replied, "I don't care what the rulebook says, change it to a hit."

He didn't care what the rulebook states. Amazing!

That's an example of one of the problems with baseball these days: too many official scorers give away hits like they're lollipops. It seems they should have Hit Night as a ballpark promotion. Every batter who puts the ball in play gets a hit regardless of the result of the play.

We've reached the point that I feel bad for pitchers. Their ERA gets inflated because they induce a routine grounder but a major league middle infielder can't be expected to catch the ball if he has to take more than one step. It seems as if there's a rule that errors are scored in major league games only on throws that end up in the boxseats. If the ball stays on the field of play, it's a hit. I guess you can't score errors because it could hurt the fielder and the hitter in his next contract negotiations.

Managers and coaches usually have an agenda when asking an official scorer to review a call. Most of the time, the scoring decisions are routine. A quick explanation of the rules or judgment decision usually satisfies those questioning the calls.

Sometimes, however, you have to wonder if the people questioning the scoring were even watching the game. Here's an example: A Frontier League manager asked the Wild Things to change two scoring decisions in a game this year at Consol Energy Park. He wanted plays that were scored as errors on the Wild Things to be reversed and hits awarded to his batters.

On one of the two plays, the visiting team's batter hit a slow roller about 30 feet up the third-base line. The Washington catcher fielded the ball cleanly but his throw sailed down the right-field line. A throwing error on the catcher was correctly scored. Upon the request of the visiting coach, the scorer reviewed video of the play several days later. I watched the replay too. When the ball reached first base, the batter's lead foot was only to where the infield grass ends and the semi-circle cutout begins on the first-base line. Had the throw been on target, the batter would have been out by at least two full strides, yet the manager wanted hit. If anything, the play could have been changed to an error on the first baseman because the throw was catchable. No way was it a hit.

On the other play, the batter hit a ball that Washington's second baseman had go under his glove. The manager wanted it scored a double (on a grounder up the middle no less) because it would have given his player the cycle.

The more I think about it, the better that Hit Night promotion sounds. Hits for everyone.