Box Score Blues

As Fantasy Football and Baseball have taken on a life of its own. I am brought back to the memories of a game that my friends and I used to play to past the time during the summers. The game had no official name that I can remember. It was, on a very minor scale.. gambling and all that we needed to play was are knowledge of baseball and some lined paper. The newspaper boxscore of the baseball game provided everything else we needed.

I give you the notorious gamblers of Rose Place and Blue Point Road
Mario, Ken, Fankie, Lenny, Steve, Davey, Sal, Ray


The Boxscore Game
The ahem..rules.

each run scored (R)= 1 point
each hit (H)= 1 point
each rbi (RBI)= 1 point

The wager
dime= per point

5-10 baseball players chosen by each of us. It really depended on how much money we had. Remember we were kids.

Players to choose from for example Jim Rice (good for 4,2,2,3)/George Foster/Johnny Bench/Dave Parker/Reggie Jackson/Brian Downing/Rod Carew (4,1,2,0)/Toby Harrah/Mike Schmidt/Dwight Evans/Yaz/Dae Kingman (always a 5,0,0,1)/Steve Garvey/Dusty Baker/Chris Chambliss/Pete Rose/ Greg Luzinski. Each of us had our own rhyme or reason why we chose are players. Some of us read the back of the baseball cards for stats and other just liked the player or team.

The Game was simple: Grand total points for the week(S) for each player chosen wins the pot.
That's it, no trades , no waiver wires to deal with, no crying about your guy getting hurt, tough noogies if your team got rained out.

Usually the game would be around 3 weeks long, not sure if they went any longer.
Say the winner would have 100 points,
2nd place guy 70, 2nd place guy owes 10 cents per point he lost by (30 x .10= $3.00)
3rd place guy 50, 3rd place guy owes 10 cents per point he lost by (50 x .10= $5.00)

I want to say I owon my share, but I know I didn't. I problably still owe someone some money, yes I definitely do. Guess I chose Mario Mendoza one too many times.
Who do I send a check to?

My most treasured memory was meeting up with the guys, waiting to get the paper to check the box scores, the excitement of all of us adding up the the players tally or groaning when their player had an o'fer night. George Hendricks had 10 RBI's one night, I know I didn't have him on my team. Sigh!

ESPN did not exist then and the regional sports news just gave scores and an occasional highlight of the local teams. When I saw my team had scored 11 runs, I am beliveing that my guy went 5 for 5 with five runs scored and 5 runs batted in. The dream game score of 15. To my dismay it was usually an o'fer night with a sad one sacrifice fly RBI.


To this day, I will read the box scores entirely and even though they have changed or added some new stats, I will always count the number of points a player gets and think back to a time that provided some special memories for me.


the sportsfreak always scores a 5,5,5,5