Author: Shannon

By ERIC SILVERSTADT | September 29, 2008

http://www.nysun.com/sports/for-scorers-the-game-is-in-the-details/86748/

Baseball umpires, just like their brethren — the referees in football, basketball, and soccer — wield power with game-altering, lightning-quick decisions and unchallengeable ball-and-strike judgment calls.

Yet the unseen overseer of the final statistics — and of all sports, baseball is the most statistic-driven — is the official scorer. Sitting on press row, next to the official scorer during one of the last games at Shea Stadium, one observes just how much his calls shape our perception of each individual game, as well as player and team statistics. Individual game stats may not affect a player or managerial team immediately. But come contract time, especially in arbitration, official statistics (not the “moneyball” equations favored by nouveau interpreters of the sport) are the bargaining chips for a prized contract, or evidence of a team in disarray.

Howie Karpin works as an official scorer for both Mets and Yankees games. A lifelong Bronx resident and former southpaw hurler for Lehman College, Karpin is officially employed by Major League Baseball, as are all scorers. Scorers are always locals, usually newspaper reporters or wire-service journalists. There’s no exam to get your foot into the press box. Traveling beat reporters in New York comment that small-market scorers often give a subtle “edge” to the home team. Karpin argues that this can never happen in New York, simply because in our baseball-obsessed climate, every fan, writer, and team executive knows most of the nuances of the game, and it’s a city where second-guessing by the press over a questionable call becomes tabloid fodder within a few hours.

Thick skin and knowledge of the game is what Karpin brings to the job. He became a scorer in 1998, replacing the legendary Red Foley (the Daily News columnist who “scored” a record 10 World Series). Karpin scores a total of 65 games a year for both teams. He’s scored 15 playoff games and three World Series (the World Series retains a triumvirate of scorers: scorers from the home teams, the visiting teams, and an independent scorer selected by MLB).

Karpin arrives at the press box about 30 minutes before a game, armed with his tools: Wite-Out, a pen, binoculars, and the official MLB box score form, which he signs off on after the game ends and sends directly to the Elias Sports Bureau. Yankee Stadium cordons off the official scorer’s seat so that he’s not disturbed by the working press, but his vision of the outfield corners is blocked (although he can use a television monitor if needed). His seat at Shea, on the other hand, is almost directly behind home plate and affords a better view. He begins his job by announcing the official time of the first pitch to members of press row with his own microphone. After that, the game dictates how involved he must become, aside from noting weather changes in his scorer’s card.

Listening to Karpin rattle off in-game stats is like listening to a Bronx short-order cook or Judge Judy. What’s interesting is that his official calls have absolutely no impact on the outcome of the game. Of course, the pitcher who loses a no-hitter in the 8th inning due to a questionable hit ruling might be rattled and melt down for a loss. Otherwise, it’s all about what goes wrong on the field and has zero connection to how the umpires might ultimately affect the game.

In a recent game against the Phillies, Philadelphia’s left fielder, Pat Burrell, overthrew his cut-off man, shortstop Jimmy Rollins. Karpin charged Burrell with an error. It was early in the game and there were no repercussions to Burrell’s play as the Phillies got out of the inning without the Mets scoring. But after the inning, a PR rep for the Phillies got in Karpin’s face and a few voices along press role were heard grumbling about the call. A look at the television monitor showed that Rollins was out of position as the cut-off man, thus causing Burrell’s throw to skip by him.

The error was reversed.

As the game proceeded, Karpin’s voice began ringing through the press box as numerous pitching changes occurred. (It’s the Mets, what did you expect?) Each exiting pitcher’s stat line for the day is announced, including hits allowed, walks, earned runs, etc. Karpin joked that Jose Lima, while pitching for the Mets in 2006, hit the “cluster” pitching line: a HR, a WP (wild pitch), a HBB (hit by pitch), and a balk, all in one inning. During the seventh-inning stretch, Karpin mentioned that a key element of his job is usually neglected by the fans: defensive assists.

Assists are usually noted for the rocket-armed outfielders who gun down opposing runners on the base paths. The routine assist in the infield is where the numbers pile up; obviously, infielders are the most vulnerable to the assist/error ratio. Jose Reyes‘s extraordinary range increases the rate of an error, while the limited range of Hall-of-Famer and Golden Glove-perennial Ryan Sandburg did contribute to his remarkably error-free career. Roberto Alomar’s tricky behind-the-back flip to second gave him considerable leeway as far as being charged with an error, Karpin opined.

Official scorers usually garner the spotlight when it’s not wanted — the most recent case being the overwrought “controversy” surrounding C.C. Sabathia‘s one-hitter on August 31. The hit, off a “swinging” bunt, occurred in the 5th inning of a game that would end with Sabathia retiring the final 15 hitters in order for the victory. That Sabathia himself was guilty of mishandling the bunt added some irony to the story. Karpin calls this event an “OSN” (Official Scorer’s Nightmare) and hesitantly disagreed with the official call in Pittsburgh. It’s the worst-case
scenario for a scorer when he has to make a ruling on a controversial scoring play and it turns out to be the only hit of the game. Karpin doesn’t blame the official scorer. It was a “down the middle” call, a MLB “code” term, and the league wasn’t about to break tradition by awarding a retroactive no-hitter.

The pressure on the official scorer usually increases as the game progresses, but Karpin relishes this. One of the more sublime elements of baseball is the absence of a clock affecting the parameters of each game. On par with a suspense film or mystery novel , baseball weaves forward through its own internal clock — the inning — generating tension that strengthens until the final out of a tight game. For Karpin, it’s all business (although he does admit to being a Yankees fan).

Ultimately, what the official scorer witnesses on the field goes into the record book (and tomorrow’s box score) as the final verdict, the gatekeeper of a century-long tradition of statistics that makes this angle of the sport so appealing.

By TIM MARCHMAN | September 29, 2008

http://www.nysun.com/sports/mets-fans-should-embrace-the-suffering/86777/

The Mets, according to a survey Siena College conducted earlier this year, are the favorite team of 12% of New Yorkers, a population that, broadly defined, counts 18.75 million people. We can thus suppose that there are about 2.37 million Mets fans in the metropolitan area.

If team owners Fred and Jeff Wilpon and general manager Omar Minaya were to apologize personally to them all 10 at a time, and if each of these apologies lasted a minute, it would take 164 1/2 days of round-the-clock groveling to make good to every last Mets fan. This would leave the three men free right around Opening Day of next year; they should get started.

What Mets fans want, of course, are solutions, not personal apologies, but the latter seem likelier by far. A year after their last great collapse, the Mets suffered another one because of specific mistakes that weren’t the result just of bad judgment, but of a misguided philosophy, one that’s been consistently held as long as the Wilpons have been involved with the team.

This philosophy holds that money can solve all ills, that a team with a few true stars doesn’t need to worry overmuch about what happens at the margins of the roster, and that changes are made to punish past failures rather than to prevent future ones. A team built along these principles can be good, and occasionally better than that, but it can never enjoy any kind of sustained dominance. And indeed the Mets haven’t.

A photograph of the field at very the end of yesterday’s game could have been ordered up as a perfect illustration of these problems. On the mound for the Florida Marlins was Matt Lindstrom, the hardest-throwing reliever in baseball, casually discarded in a minor trade two years ago. At the plate was outfielder Ryan Church, picked up along with catcher Brian Schneider in a puzzling trade for the talented, if troubled, Lastings Milledge that added to the Mets’ payroll while doing little to improve the team for the long term. The scoreboard registered a deficit charged to reliever Scott Schoeneweis, a highly paid but superfluous specialist whose presence on the roster did little to address the team’s real needs. And somewhere in the edge of the frame would be manager Jerry Manuel, raising the question of what might have been if the Mets had chosen to enter the season with a leader who hadn’t already been discredited.

There’s little reason to believe that the thinking that led to that tableau will change next year, or any time in the near future. There’s thus little reason to believe that the Mets aren’t going to squander the opportunity to build a perpetually dominant team around David Wright and Jose Reyes, who will likely become the two greatest everyday players in franchise history, or that they are going to do much more than roll out yet another edition of the same incomplete and half-baked bunch of mismatched and broken parts that’s been taking the field in Queens since 2005.

This doesn’t mean that the team can’t or won’t win. No team with Wright, Reyes, Carlos Beltran, and Johan Santana, who on Saturday turned in perhaps the most inspiring performance in team history, should ever be counted out of anything, however many times the Marlins gut them on the last day of the season in front of their own fans. But it does mean that the chance to build a dynasty along the lines of the Yankees, Atlanta, or even Boston is probably gone.

Dour a conclusion as this may be to draw from the wretchedness of the last two weeks (or, for that matter, years), it does point to the one thing that Mets fans can do on their own, without waiting for the light to dawn on Wilpon and their capos: They can give up all hope. A pessimist is never disappointed and is sometimes surprised. Only by abandoning all expectations, and admitting the certainty that however badly one might think the Mets can scotch something they’ll not only find a way to do so worse, but also to do so more painfully, can the Mets fan align himself with the natural order.

After working off last night’s hangover, the Mets fan should simply give in to despair, and even seriously consider actively rooting against his team. A fan seriously convinced that Reyes is destined to go back to drawing 25 walks a year, that Santana’s arm is going to fly off on the mound, and that Wright is on the verge of succumbing to a crippling fear of the clutch is a fan whose heart can’t be torn in half by yet more miserable failure. A fan who believes that the team is simply cursed if not an outright fraud might be miserable, but he won’t be so miserable as those who work their way into believing that next year’s versions Luis Ayala and Ramon Martinez will carry their team through into October.

Total resignation and despair: For 2.4 million New Yorkers, it’s the only thing that makes sense. At least until next spring.