ASHEVILLE -- L7; 1B-8; 5-4-3 DP; HBP.
Some baseball fans will immediately recognize what appears to be a bunch of random letters and numbers -- it's scorekeeping code for a line out to left field, a single to center, a round the horn double play and hit by a pitch.
For those in the know, it defines an entire game's offensive story for one batter, who finished 1-for-3 and reached base twice.
Keeping score at baseball games has become a lost art, a once common sight now seemingly reduced to a mostly male, mostly older segment of fans.
At an Asheville Tourists baseball game in the Class A South Atlantic League last week, a casual search through the crowd of 1,552 found just five men -- all older than the age of 40 -- keeping score.
For the uninitiated, keeping score involves charting each at-bat (some do it pitch-by-pitch), keeping track of hits, runs, errors plus all fielding and pitching stats.
It's fun for the fans but more serious for the team's official scorer, who makes decisions on hits and errors and earned or unearned runs that become part of the players' official statistics.
Reasons vary as to why people seemingly coming to the ballpark to relax and unwind spend a majority of their time taking notes in very small handwriting, but it is a long and time-honored tradition that some take very seriously.
At age 48, Brian Tracy of Fairview and his wife Ruth are attending their first Tourists game and Brian is also keeping score for the first time.
"I learned how to do it online; there are some Web sites that teach you how," said Tracy. "I thought it would be fun and would help me keep up with the game and remember what happened."
The baseball gods must like those who keep score, even rookies. The Tracys caught a foul ball in the second inning.
Off and on for more than 30 years, former Citizen-Times sports editor Richard Morris was the official scorer for the Tourists. In an era when sportswriters covering baseball customarily doubled up as the official scorer, Morris assumed that role as part of his job.
After his retirement from the newspaper, Morris' became the team's recognized official scorer, and the press box at McCormick Field is named in his honor.
The beloved character who saw his first game at McCormick Field at age six in 1924, died at age 75 in 1994. Morris left behind many stories from more than three decades of scoring baseball in Asheville.
One involved a trip to the bathroom during a game, and he asked a sportswriter to handle the duties while he was away. Part of the official scorer's job is to determine whether a play is a hit or an error, and fans often disagree with those choices, especially if the call goes against the home team.
While Morris was in the bathroom, an opposing player drilled a ball to deep centerfield. The Tourists' outfielder made a leaping attempt at the wall, but the ball bounced off the tip of his glove as the outfielder crashed into the wall.
The play was obviously a triple, but as a prank the sportswriter flashed an error on the scoreboard and fans were howling as Morris returned to his seat.
Morris asked why people were yelling and screaming up at him in the open air press box that was very close to the stands in the old McCormick Field.
The sportswriter lied, "It was an easy play, Richard. The ball was in his glove."
Taking the sportswriter at face value as fans continued to yell at him, Morris leaned out over the press box and yelled back, "It was in his glove!"
Find 10 fans who are keeping score and you will probably find 10 different ways of doing it. There are few rules and standards, and most use the same style that fathers or coaches taught them in their youth with the accompanying notations and shorthand familiar to no one else.
Jack McKnight and Joe Nesbitt are 49-year-olds from Fairview, self-described "cousins-in-law" who enjoy keeping score at Tourists games but don't take it real seriously.
Sitting in the front row, their score sheets spread out on top of the Tourists' dugout are also doubling as tablecloths for the hot dogs and drinks.
"I try to keep score at about every game if I get here on time," said Nesbitt, pausing to write a backward K next to a mustard stain to indicate a batter caught looking at a third strike.
"Sometimes I keep the other team's score and sometimes I just keep the Tourists.' I'm not that dedicated.
"I know people that keep a pitch count, but then guys starting fouls ball off, and then what do you do? That's too much like work." ''
"It's fun, and it helps you keep up with what's going on," said McKnight. "When a guy comes up to bat I can look back and see if he hit two home runs or has struck out twice."
"That helps you know who to yell at and what to yell," chimed in Nesbitt.
Tourists' manager Joe Mikulik played 12 years in the minor leagues and found himself in 1992 with 999 career hits. Wanting to reach the 1,000-hit landmark at home in Tucson, Ariz., Mikulik rifled a shot to the outfield.
"I hit a ball in the gap and both outfielders are running for it," he said. "The ball falls between them after one of them has it glance off his glove. The HOME official scorer rules it an error. My 1,000th hit, at home, a ball in the gap with both guys on the run. I was kinda upset, but I was a professional and didn't complain about it. I got my hit on the road."
It must be a Hendersonville thing. Since Morris' retirement in 1992, Mike Gore has been the team's official scorer.
Gore, who grew up in Hendersonville just two blocks from Morris' home, is by day the associate athletics director and sports information director at UNC Asheville.
By night he is the guy responsible for the official statistics of the Tourists, the lone decider of what's a hit or error, earned vs. unearned runs and the recording and reporting of all numbers to major-league baseball people who keep track in a statistics-crazed game.
"My first year, I saw the most unusual double play," said Gore, who estimates between duties for the Tourists and UNCA, he has scored more than a 1,000 games.
"(Current Texas Rangers outfielder) Richard Hidalgo hit a shot to left on a hit and run, a one-hop line drive. The leftfielder threw the runner out at third by 30 feet and they got Hildago trying to go to second. It was your typical 7-5-4 double play."
Ever seen six outs recorded on four pitches? Gore has.
"Last year the Tourists turned an around the horn triple play and the next inning each batter swung at the first pitch and made an out," Gore said.
"Four pitches, six outs; it's the classic example of you can see something different every time you go to a baseball game."
The toughest call? "Hit or error on a fly ball to the outfield," said Gore. "You have to consider how far the outfielder ran for the ball, was the sun in his eyes, did it touch his glove, should he have made the play. That's the hardest. Pass ball or wild pitch is a tough one, too."
It's a labor of love -- Gore makes just $30 a game -- and for that he occasionally catches flak from offensive players who want it called a hit to help their batting average, defensive players who want it called a hit to protect their fielding percentage, pitchers who want it called an error to lower their earned run averages, managers who want to defend their players, and fans who disagree with the call.
"In the earlier days I heard (complaints) more often, not so much as I got better at it," he said.
Gore said he rarely changes a call after hearing the player's or manager's argument -- "maybe once or twice a season. Sometimes they have a better view or angle and I will listen to that, but sometimes we just disagree. Same thing with the fans; they just want the call to go the Tourists' way."
McKnight and Nesbitt laughed when asked about how often they disagreed with the official scorer. "Daily, just about," said McKnight. "But that's part of the fun of keeping score. I don't know what they pay that guy, but we're thinking about going to (Ron McKee, the Tourists' president) and seeing if he will let us do it for free food. We don't want any money."
An official scorer back in the late 1980s and was enjoying the free beer once offered to press box inhabitants at McCormick Field. After disagreeing with an umpire's call, the guy apparently forgot the scorers' creed about remaining objective.
On a late night when there were very few fans, the scorer's long and loud objections to the ump could be heard all over the park. His parting shot was the following salvo: "How can you hold up your (rear end) when you don't have a spine?''
The ump turned, pointed and said, "The guy in the press box in glasses, the white shirt and receding hairline, you're outta here!"
The guy was suspended three games by the Sally League and fined $50.
And thus, for one of the few times in history, an official scorer who would never again work for the Tourists was ejected from a game.
Of greater concern that included long-lasting and lamentable ramifications, free beer was no longer allowed in the press box.
"You see a guy keeping score nowadays, he's a dinosaur. It's like the bunt; you never seen it anymore," said Mikulik.
"But what you also see is the true fan, the guy with passion and love for the game. A true fan gets to the ballpark in time to check out the lineups and keeps score."