Yesterday morning I was awoken by a telephone call from a buddy of mine. He wanted to know if I wanted to go to the Phillies game today. I am always up for a game. He had a bonus for me; these tickets were behind home plate with access to the Diamond Club.
Four of us drove up. Upon entering Citizens Bank Park through the club opening, we received wristbands. These permitted us entry to the Diamond Club. We dined on hamburgers in the air-conditioned restaurant. There was an awesome salad bar, a brisket station, a panini station, some other station, and the hamburgers. There was a massive bar there too.
We discovered that the clubs’ batting cages are visible from the restaurant. That was very kewl, although we basically missed out on the players.
After that we took a private elevator up to the Hall of Fame Club. Wow! There is a lot of Phillies and baseball memorabilia there. The highlight for me was Harry Kalas’s scorecard.
We then wandered out to our seats. We didn’t have far to go. Out the air conditioned restaurant were our seats. These were tremendous seats. The seats were padded. We had waiter service. There was plenty of leg room. The spectators here were all well behaved and pleasant.
Last week was scorching hot. Today was pleasant. It was warm out, but there was a pleasant breeze. And as Phil commented, every time the restaurant doors opened, we felt air conditioning.
Interestingly, a few days ago my sister ordered tickets to this game. We were able to see each other from our seats. I took this photograph of her taking a photograph of me (I think).
Being a day game, we got to see the second team. Schneider caught, Blanton pitched, Gload was in right, etc. We fell behind immediately. Fortunately, the steroid user Jason Giambi plays for the Rockies. He made two egregious errors in the third that permitted us to get ahead 3-2. We added a couple more runs late. We needed those because Mitch Williams Brad Lidge pitched the ninth. He gave up a two-run blast and then loaded the bases before getting the third out.
This was a wonderful day at the park . . . far better than the disaster a few weeks ago. Perhaps I just need to go to games with the guys sans children and sit in the really good seats to enjoy the park. I would definitely sit here any time.
First-time fair vendor Dean Margarites of Monmouth County said he likely will skip setting up his Greek-A-Licious stand here next year because of poor sales.
“If I have something else going on, I’ll probably stick to something closer,” Margarites said.
As far as I am concerned that will improve the fair. Greek-a-Licious served me the absolute worst gyro I have ever eaten . . . Several years ago I noticed that BlogNetNews.com had picked up eCache in its feeds. It’s an interesting site, although it never generated much traffic here. A couple years ago the url for eCache changed. I contacted them to update it several times. They never did and I stopped trying. Just now in one of my feeds, I stumbled across this site again. I too a quick look. Not only have they not updated my feed, they have me classified as liberal. Bahaaaawwww . . . “Terrell Owens says he’s concerned teams are swayed by the perception that he’s a troublemaker and that’s why none have signed the free-agent receiver.” You think? I will be sorry to see Terrell retire. Since we have the same surname, my students always feel a kindred spirit. I use T.O. as an example throughout the year whenever my students fall into “me first” mode. We pound our chests just like the clueless one. Who will I use when he is no longer relevant? . . . Newspapers employing paywalls is poor business, imo, but Lancaster Online has taken the cake. Their new model uses a paywall only for obituaries. After reading seven obits, one will have to pay for the eighth. Yeah, that will work . . . Scoble is a media whore. He’s been pimping his “secret” all week. We’re all impressed . . . The other evening the handle fell off my Weber Performer. The grill i eight years old. The handle had rusted. I e-mailed the company, forwarded photographs, etc. In the mail right now to me is a replacement lid and thermometer free of charge. Weber has outstanding customer service . . .
Yes, I am a baseball fan. I don’t collect memorabilia. I am not a player. And I don’t engage much these days in the endless sabermetrics that having one poring over minutia. But I am a scorer. To me, scoring a game is both science and an art.
Hand scoring a game is one of those simple “old time” things. My mother taught me how to do that decades ago. I’ve developed my own scorecard over the years. It’s based upon a “traditional” card, but I record a lot of extra data.
Several years ago I found Fixed It’s Baseball Scorecard. It’s an electronic scorecard. Over a few years they created a very good piece of software. It works well. Baseball is a complicated game and designing software to accommodate all situations is trying. They have done a good job with their software. I know there’s a guy who has been complaining about some oddity the software doesn’t handle well, but it has never affected me.
The one drawback I have found is that lineups have to be set prior to scoring the game. That can be a real PITA. Those who score Little League or high school games may get the lineup moments before the commencement of the game. I tend to score MLB games. Even there, I need to enter rosters and then be ready a half hour beforehand to be able to score a game. With little ones around, that doesn’t happen as often as I like.
Advance forward to today. Summer vacation has finally settled in. I am in baseball mode, despite my Phillies losing three of four to the Pirates this weekend. I decided I wanted to score tonight’s game. Halladay was on the mound. Perfect.
I’ve been looking around for an app for the phone for a while. There was one that was pulled. It apparently was not very good. Somebody else recently wrote one. He did so to give a paper-and-pencil feel. I like that. I know there are some limitations to it, so I’ve held off. I finally decided to install it today.
At first I didn’t think I was going to like it. There are limitations to the program. It didn’t help that after I spent some considerable time typing the 40-man rosters of the Braves and the Phillies, setting up the lineups, and preparing the game, when I went to use 6-4-3 (the name of the software), the lineups were gone. The first pitch was on the way and I was stuck with Braves #1, Braves #2, etc. for the lineup.
Despite the snafu, 6-4-3 excels in lineup manipulation. One can add either from the roster or by hand on the fly. This will be appreciated by those of us who don’t have it all prepared prior to the beginning of the game. It took an inning before I realized I could do more than the current batter by going into the roster. I like how this works.
Scoring the play-by-play is rather straightforward. The ball and strike buttons are nice and big. Once I got comfortable, it was no big deal scoring. Things move smoothly.
The problems I ran into with 6-4-3 is correcting mistakes. Once one moves to the next batter, there is no way to rectify mistakes. That is a problem, particularly when one finds himself amid a strange issue. As a newcomer to the app, I stressed in the first inning over a couple things. I can easily see being at a game when I don’t have Gameday running to check what I might miss and there being a complicated pickle that I need to wait for the Official Scorer to post the play. Meanwhile, the next batter is batting. Or what happens if the OS changes a ruling an inning later? Being able to edit after the fact is needed in this app.
It wasn’t until late in the game I realized I was marking hits incorrectly. I was pulling up my finger at each base. Therefore, Chipper Jones’ first inning homerun is marked a single, even though I had him rounding the bases. This is a perfect example of needing to be able to go back. I can see making this mistake again and not realizing it until it is too late.
The normal is handled well in 6-4-3. I imagine the more I use it, the more comfortable it will feel. The end of the game did present issues. After the Braves batted in the ninth, the app allowed me to go to the bottom of the inning despite the game being over. I saw no way to end the game. I am fortunate I read at that point or I would have lost all my work. Had I, I would have returned the app and gotten my money back. One needs to export the game as two images, one for the home team and one for the visiting. This is the only record, it appears, of the game. There is no game file. I do not like that aspect of this at all.
Overall, it is a decent attempt. I would easily jump at another app that was more refined. I am hopeful this one will mature. It has some promise to it.
As I scored the game, I took some notes. The following are things I noticed and what I recommend:
second word in team name should default to capitalize When I begin typing Atlanta Braves as a team name, when I click the space key, the keyboard should go to prepare a capital letter. Entering a player in the roster works likes this.
notes needed for each play Some plays require a note. A fan runs onto the field, a power outage, it was so-and-so’s 3,000th hit, etc. Being able to log a note that would provide an asterisk/footnote at the bottom of the card would be appreciated.
be able to modify after the fact (end of game) Discussed above. This is how a mistake is going to be corrected. Limiting fixing until one clicks Next Batter may not give the scorer enough time to deal with complications in the play.
dots for balls, strikes, and outs are confusing It took me a couple innings to catch on. Even still, since one is using a phone’s screen, seven dots all the same color are hard for older eyes to differentiate. At least color the outs a different (red) color to distinguish them from the pitches.
throws to first, etc. I like to record everything in a game. There is no way to record none pitches.
the font is a bit funky. I understand the font was selected to resemble the hand scoring feel. This font, however, is not a prominent font, imo. Something more tame or perhaps a choice of what font to use would be good.
fora It would be wonderful to have a discussion area set up so users can congregate and share various tips, etc. with one another.
location of hit ball I know others have mentioned it, but the location of the batted ball is critical for a hand-scored game.
foul should have a bat sound One of the simple things Fixed It’s software has is a sound associated with certain events. Most notably, when one clicks foul, a short ball hitting bat sound is heard. That would differentiate the event from accidentally hitting the wrong button. Plus, I find it a neat feature.
advance when runner advances on throw, SB, etc. Most scorers I know indicate on the line drawn on the diamond how the runner advanced. If he is on second from a double and then heads to third on a fielder’s choice by the next batter, that advancement should be noted on the diamond. There are lots of advancements like that that should be added.
quick mechanism to see what batter has previously done in the game Later in the game, it would be nice to be able to call up the batter’s previous ABs. TBS always shows the scorecard for the individual batter. I was thinking of clicking a menu button would pull up the line from the card for the batter at the plate. Clicking back would return to the current AB.
batter name more prominent One thing I noted as I scored the game was that I was constantly verifying I had the correct batter up. Fearing I somehow hadn’t advanced correctly or something, I kept looking for the batter’s name. It does not stand out well in the top bar, particularly when there is a longer name that does not provide a space before BOT 7 (or whatever). Perhaps bolding the batter or putting it in the title bar would help it stand out.
how to make a defensive substitution I am not certain I know how to make a defensive substitution. I figured out how to do it with the batter, but if a new left fielder comes in at the half inning, does one just go to lineup and make the change? I was hesitant to try. But thinking it through, that would allow me to call up substitution. I’ll try that next time.
end/save game to edit later on Discussed above. One should be able to return to the game another day. As far as I can see, that is not able to happen. What if there was a rain stoppage? More to my concern, I could easily see being distracted and finishing the scoring with the replay.
Pitching designations The game I had did not have a declared winning or losing pitcher. There was no save in my game, but I suspect saves are not indicated either. This would be a welcomed addition.
after the game, when I plugged into laptop, forced closed app; lost game Fortunately, I figured out how to save the .PNGs before this happened. I think I got up for a minute or two and the phone turned off. When I came back to it, 6-4-3 had been forcibly closed by the system. Whatever was going on made the phone want the program closed. Because there is no game file, as far as I know, associated with the game, I was prompted for a new game. I would have been disappointed if I didn’t already generate the scorecard.
how to enter start and end times and attendance? I noted on the scorecard there were fields for start and end times as well as attendance. I cannot figure out where that information is entered.
import rosters Even with Fixed It’s program, entering the rosters is a PITA. On a cellphone, it is even a bigger pain. Being able to import a roster to the cellphone would be most welcomed. Ben collates the MLB rosters daily on his Pitch-By-Pitch site. I don’t know how 6-4-3 handles the roster, but being able to construct it on a computer and importing it to the phone would be a huge benefit!
When I first moved here 16 years ago, I made two immediate observations: 1. there are no sidewalks and 2. the mentality of the area is “We’re depressed, therefore you must give.” This blog tackles #2 regularly. Along Wheaton Avenue right now, #1 is being addressed. Sure, a couple million dollars of federal stimulus money is behind this, but it is still nice to see . . . The Norcross machine sure gets a lot of grief in this state, particularly this area. It’s deserved. But I did notice that Don Norcross, the brother of South Jersey the political boss, has proposed something that actually makes sense. Did you know you can’t purchase a motorcycle in New Jersey on Sunday? This archaic blue law should have been off the books some time ago. Will it bring back Millville Harley? No. Will it solve our economic woes? No. But here is a proposal that will help without a single tax being levied against the citizens. This is good . . . While I have been generally impressed with the job Gov. Christie is doing, I am concerned about the budget that is about to be passed. It doesn’t seem to have been reduced, and I keep hearing about tax increases buried in there. Christie will pay a hefty price if he has taxes/fees in his budget. Not only will he be hammered for it, he will lose the respect of those who have supported him . . . A guest of ours on Sunday said to me, “I had no idea how loud the track is” on his way out. Sunday was a “quiet” day in our neighborhood, although we were able to hear it over the motor we ran for our water slide . . . Speaking of NJMP, the AC Press seems to be onto the idea that NJMP is not drawing crowds. Sure would like to hear more about this . . . Today is the confirmation hearing for an American hero. General Patraeus will be on the Hill today. Of course, there is silence from MoveOn.org. When President Bush had Patraeus in charge, the whacky left group cried “General Betray Us”. Why the hypocrisy when President Obama hires the same guy? Could it be that MoveOn.org is not principled? . . . Who would have thought that Kevin Costner’s legacy would include cleaning up oil in the Gulf? . . . Why the differences in functions for the same software depending on one’s mobile unit, MLB? No streaming games or player stats if you don’t own an iPhone or iPad. Bah! . . . Are you ready for The Daily Journal to go behind a paywall? I haven’t paid for this paper in the last seven years and I don’t plan on adding it to the Owens budget to read the drivel that passes for local news. Is Gannett really that bold? . . .
Yesterday morning I was awoken by a telephone call from a buddy of mine. He wanted to know if I wanted to go to the Phillies game today. I am always up for a game. He had a bonus for me; these tickets were behind home plate with access to the Diamond Club.
We then wandered out to our seats. We didn’t have far to go. Out the air conditioned restaurant were our seats. These were tremendous seats. The seats were padded. We had waiter service. There was plenty of leg room. The spectators here were all well behaved and pleasant.
