Why read The Joy of Keeping Score?

Book cover of The Joy of Keeping Score: How Scoring the Game Has Influenced and Enhanced the History of Baseball

Book description

The history of scorekeeping, practical scoring techniques, notable scorekeeping blunders and idiosyncrasies, facsimiles of famous scorecards, and more-it’s all here in this “celebration of one of baseball’s most divine and unique pleasures” (USA Today Baseball Weekly).

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Joy of Keeping Score as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Karen Levy

Author

A book about pencil-and-paper baseball scorekeeping might seem like an odd one to include on a list about technology! But that’s precisely the point: even though by-hand scoring seems like an unnecessary relic in the digital age, this book so beautifully explains why people do it anyway, and how much richness and storytelling and personality there can be in a practice that, at first glance, seems like it might just be rote transcription. Recording data isn’t a science—it can be an art, a tradition, and a joy unto itself.

From Karen's list on The best human stories about technology.