Box scores represent far more than stats

Almost to the day she died, my aunt was fond of the story of how I, as a toddler, would sit on her lap as we watched Philadelphia Phillies games on TV, and when the camera switched from a visiting player to a Phillie, I would gesture, look at her and say, “Good guy!”

Family tales claim I learned to write numbers and some letters, notably K, W, S and F, while “helping” her keep score on homemade scorecards.

I remember sitting, as a pre-teen, on the porch, waiting for the newspaper to arrive, so I could look at the box scores and see how my favorite players did the night before and decipher how the game unfolded using the techniques she taught.

I was in the upper deck with her on the opening day of Veteran’s Stadium in Philadephia and again that October night in 1980 when the Phillies won the World Series.

And, the one time I deliberately trampled professional ethics was when, during my first year in the business, I finished an interview with Richie Ashburn at a fundraiser, apologized to him in advance and explained why. My aunt kept that framed, personalized autograph from her all-time favorite player on her nightstand the rest of her life.

So I know all too well that when you change box scores or standings in a newspaper, you mess with far more than a bunch of numbers.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot over the past three months while contemplating changes to our baseball coverage as part of our new redesign, adopting some changes, discarding others and responding to readers’ subsequent questions and complaints.

Some of you have been unhappy with the loss of the expanded box scores. Some have been concerned about games not listed in the standings. Some have been concerned with the Rays being seemingly demoted. Some have wanted to suggest other options.

Rest assured, we began exploring options in early March. We knew by then our pending redesign and the arrival of a shared baseball page would result in significant change.

It quickly became apparent we could keep running expanded box scores, but only for Tampa Bay, Miami, Pittsburgh and Baltimore on a daily basis because of space constraints. While we might be able to run more on some days, we would never be able to run more than eight or nine. In April and May alone, that meant we would be unable to print all of the available boxes nearly half the time.

Considering how diverse our readership’s fan allegiances are, we decided that would be unacceptable to the greater number of you. So we opted for an alternative that gives you less information per game, but ensures you get almost every box score available at our deadline. We decided to switch at the season’s start, so we didn’t give you expanded boxes for six weeks only to take them away midseason.

As for standings, they are part of a common module (the top half of the baseball page), which now comes from Kansas City and is used by most McClatchy papers east of the Rocky Mountains.

And through the first 10 days of our new look, the results are more mixed than we would have liked.

So I ask you to give this a month or so before reaching conclusions. If we find a way we can regularly get a significantly higher number of games into the standings/roundup, we will do so.

The aunts, uncles and toddlers out there deserve nothing less.

This story was originally published May 29, 2016 at 11:48 PM with the headline "Box scores represent far more than stats."