Marty always keeps a score book. Actually, I think it’s in her iPad. She is meticulous. If you don’t paint the right picture for her, it’s going to get her liver in a quiver. I am the same way. I want the play-by-play guy to tell me exactly what I want to know – every time.
I was bouncing around last night between baseball and basketball. Turned on the basketball as I headed to pick up dinner. The halftime guy for IMG (in a studio somewhere far away) went through three breaks without giving the score. He actually gave the halftime stats without giving the score until the last five seconds. So he went through an entire 10 minutes on air (it’s mostly commercials at halftime) without giving the halftime score until Chuck was just about to resume the broadcast. He gave a bunch of scores from around the SEC. But he was not giving the Arkansas score from the game that was being broadcast. Give me a break. That’s a fundamental of broadcasting. Give the score. Give the score. Then give it again.
I kept losing the signal online through the Arkansas Gameday app. It would fade out sometimes and Scott would have these long pauses sometimes. I would wait forever and then Scott would start talking finally and sometimes I would wait a long time, realize I had lost the feed again, turn it off and on, and there would be the play by play way past where I had last heard it. It was very frustrating. I realize that Scott is by himself on the broadcast and one guy can only talk so much, so I tried to stay patient.
Clay is right. I keep score on my iPad. I have the same app on both the iPad and the iPhone.
I pay $19.99 each year for an add-on, but oh what an add-on. I get all of the rosters for all NCAA teams and any major league or minor league team (15 leagues in all, including NCAA softball).
It even has a Discover Game option that loads the starting line-ups for me. That works for all MLB games and maybe MiLB games, but not NCAA games.
Of course, it is called iScore. They make several scoring apps for various sports. The developer is Faster Than Monkeys. There are lots and lots of options available for scoring. I use Scorekeeper Level Advanced and Minimize Questions No for Hog games. That allows me to fully describe each play. I don’t track pitch location/type, although that is available. I do record each pitch. iScore is easy to follow for anyone who knows baseball and has at least a nodding acquaintance with scoring.
When I score other games (for example, at the CWS) I don’t track pitches and I use the quick scoring option.
My strongest recommendation is that (once you get an app like this one) you score a game in which you really have little interest. That allows you to learn the app without screwing it up too badly. iScore does offer several good training videos.
My biggest complaint about iScore is the inability to completely edit an at bat post-game. You can edit nearly everything about the at bat unless you missed some pitches. The original app that I used allowed full editing, but it was much less intuitive to use.
Now you know more than you wanted. But feel free to pester me with any questions that you have.