It may seem odd that for a while I was a religious scorer of baseball games. That was back when my hometown ballyard was County Stadium. Somewhere in the depths of my basement, there is a scorebook loaded with games from the late 1980s.
It's odd because I'm not a stats-obsessed baseball fan. I follow my teams and I love watching the game, but I have a terrible memory for the minutiae of sport. Likely because my head is filled with useless information about music.
Although my son and I have been to dozens of games together, we've never scored one. Even now he's a little too young to really grasp it all, but he's old enough to watch and take and interest and even help out.
And that's just what happened on Saturday evening as we sat and watched the Brewers beat the Astros. Well, that, and us Googling the multi-colored '70s Astros uniforms.
On the way to the game, we talked about what scoring is, what it entails and how you do it. I explained that although the fielding positions have names, they also have numbers that are used when scoring plays.
We also talked about how scoring a game makes it easier to relive it later on. Reliving some games can be a nightmare for a Mets/Brewers fan, but some are definitely worth remembering.
Lucky for us our first one was among the latter, thanks to Rickie Weeks' lead-off inside-the-park homer.
Scoring the game helped us focus more on it and offered up countless opportunities to explain the plays. And I think it may have helped organize those plays -- perhaps seemingly random to a little kid -- into a more comprehensible whole.
Even though we only scored through the sixth inning, I absolutely loved scoring the game with my boy and it felt like a big moment to me. I think he enjoyed it, too, though it likely seemed less monumental to him. In fact, I think his Malt Cup may have left a bigger mark for now.
But just in case he wants to remember and reconsider it later, I stapled our tickets and the box score to the scorecard and put it in his scrapbook.
Next up: my pack rat-ism.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
