Not to change the subject, but seeing this thread bumped reminded me that tomorrow is my debut as the scorekeeper for my daughter's new softball team. I know the rules pretty well, but I've never kept score. It's not just how many runs each team has. It's recording every pitch and every play of the entire game in a special scorebook. Below is one of many examples I found online.
I didn't offer; I was "volunteered" by the coach. I must have looked like the biggest nerd of all the parents at practice. As a lifelong baseball fan, I'm looking forward to it testing my knowledge and accuracy. The only thing I'm not looking forward to is my eyesight. I'm mildly nearsighted, which means I need or at least prefer glasses to drive, watch TV, walk around in the city, and watch softball as a spectator. But, unlike most people my age and older, I don't reach for reading glasses when I need to see up close. I take my glasses off for reading, working at a computer, cooking, and so forth. I suspect I'll be fidgeting with my prescription sunglasses the whole game - on to see the field (and players' numbers) and then off to see the book. Someone needs to make "reverse reading glasses" with the lenses up high so they can be looked under instead of down low to be looked over.
Last year, on a different team, one of the girls' mothers was our scorekeeper and it was obvious she had done it many times before. She even settled a dispute with the other team at one game. Their scorekeeper came out empty-handed to dispute the score or how many outs there were or something like that. Our scorekeeper took her book out there and showed everyone. That shut up the other team right away. When she and her daughter went out of town for a week or two, that coach "volunteered" a guy from South Africa to keep score and it seemed to cause him a bit of stress. Later he reminded us he had never watched baseball until he came to the USA a few years prior and he didn't necessarily know all the rules. Maybe I'll do better. We'll see. I hope it won't turn something I enjoy into something I dread.