World's Greatest Scorekeeper

World’s Greatest Scorekeeper

If life were a baseball game, the story I’m about to tell would begin somewhere in the third inning. The summer of 1977 to be more precise, and near the end of a challenging decade for my hometown team—the St. Louis Cardinals. The dismal times were hard on the average fan but not me, because that mediocre stretch of baseball was the reason I met my best friend, Jake.

Jacob Elias Mitchell was an elderly gentleman back in 1977, and would’ve been easy to pick out of a crowd thanks to the bright white shock of hair exploding out from underneath his ever-present, red baseball cap. But there was never a need, because Jake and I were typically the only souls sitting high up in Busch Stadium’s upper deck back in those days—he down on the railing and me dozens of rows back. The old man would be alone shortly after the first inning, when I moved to an open seat in the lower deck.

That changed dramatically in August.

My favorite player, Lou Brock, was rapidly approaching Ty Cobb’s all-time stolen base record of 893, and the crowds were getting larger every night. The opportunities to move to an open seat in the two lower levels dried up completely in mid-August, and the best I could manage was to move down closer to Jake. After one game sitting in the row directly behind him, I no longer wanted to move to a better seat.

There wasn’t one.

I first noticed the elderly man’s sorcery during a game with the Montreal Expos on August 13^th. Cards hurler John Urrea outdueled the Expos' Wayne Twitchell in a 1-0 victory for the home team, but that’s not what I remember most from that fateful day. Decades have passed since that warm summer night, but my hand still trembles as I write these words.

The Cardinals had the bases loaded and only one out in the bottom of the fifth, and Twitchell fell behind in the count to Keith Hernandez 2-0. When Expos’ manager Dick Williams paid a visit to the mound to settle his pitcher down, I saw Jake jot something on his scorecard, place it on the empty seat next to his, and proceed up the stairs toward the third level promenade.

Hernandez ended the inning by hitting into a double play, and I watched closely when Jake returned to his seat. I’d been sitting behind him long enough to know the man was a meticulous scorekeeper, but he didn’t update his scorecard, even though he would’ve heard the disappointing end to the Cards’ fifth inning on loudspeakers scattered around the upper deck.

Jake’s odd behavior spiked my curiosity, so I studied him closely for the rest of the game by secretly peeking over his shoulder. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve never told a soul what I witnessed on August 13^th, 1977.

Until now.

I wanted to frequently over the years, mind you—partly as a sanity check, but mostly to share with someone, anyone, what I witnessed. It was such a simple thing really. As simple as a wrinkled hand carefully recording a five, a dash, and a three inside a tiny box on a scorecard before one of the best hitters in the league grounded out third-to-first—or ‘5-3’ in baseball scorekeeping terminology.

Did you catch that? I said before.

I’ll admit it didn’t sink in at first. I didn’t fully comprehend the magnitude of what I was witnessing that night. At first, it just seemed strange how the old man wrote down the correct entry on his scorecard shortly before a play happened. Okay…before every play happened.

The top of the sixth was a perfect example. Expos catcher Gary Carter led off the inning with a fly out to the right fielder, but only after Jake had written the number nine very slowly and deliberately on the scorecard. Larry Parrish struck out, and by the time Pete Mackanin ended the inning with a ground out to first, Jake had already recorded both outs on his scorecard and was busy pulling a drink out of his ever-present metal cooler.

The Cards went on the road after the Expo series, and Mr. Brock wound up setting the stolen base record while the team was in San Diego. By the time the Cards returned home from the long road trip to face the Chicago Cubs, I was seriously questioning whether I had imagined it all.

I got to know the man during the next homestand. The Pirates followed the Cubs into town, the crowds died down, and before long it was once again Jacob Mitchell and yours truly alone in the upper deck. I can only imagine how cliché this must sound, but a full moon had just peaked out from behind clouds during the seventh inning stretch when he glanced over his shoulder and caught me staring at him. Instead of getting miffed like I expected, he gestured for me to join him in the first row.

We sat next to each other in silence through the bottom of the seventh and then the top of the eighth. It was a tough inning for the home team because Pittsburgh scored four runs, two caused directly by Cardinal errors. Nine batters came to the plate before it ended, and this time I had a front row seat to the Greatest Show on Earth. Not a contest between two professional baseball teams…rather, the incredible way the mysterious man kept score.

For all nine batters, eight scheduled hitters and one pinch hitter, Jacob Elias Mitchell recorded the correct entry on the scorecard before each play happened on the field. He even went so far as to put a line through Pirates pitcher John Candelaria on the scorecard and pencil in pinch hitter Mario Mendoza, well before Pirate manager Chuck Tanner stepped out of the dugout and conferred with plate umpire Frank Pulli on that exact substitution.

I was too overwhelmed to say anything that night and could only sit rigid in the seat with my head staring at the concrete between my feet when the game ended. Jake left minutes before Card’s shortstop Gary Templeton grounded into a game inning force-out. I heard him say he’d see me tomorrow as he made his way carefully up the aisle, but I didn’t lift my head until a young attendant asked me to leave what was now an empty stadium.

I showed up the next night an hour early and grabbed a seat in the very top row of the ballpark. It was at least thirty rows behind where Jake normally sat, but he took the seat next to me when he arrived ten minutes before the first pitch. There was an aura about him that night, even more palpable than the night before.

If you ask big questions, you must be ready for big answers, so it wasn’t until the seventh inning stretch that I mustered enough nerve to ask mine. I don’t think Jake needed his special gift to know it was coming and, at first, he simply smiled.

“I love keeping score,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “You might be surprised how far back my collection of scorecards goes.”

He smiled and returned his attention to the game, so I went back to watching his hands record play after play before they happened on the field. When the bottom of the seventh inning ended, he folded his scorecard shut, tilted his head back, and gazed up at the night sky.

“Look into the heavens, Ryan,” he said, his words cutting through the thick night air like a sickle. “What do you see?”

I tried but couldn’t turn away from the man’s face. I already knew what was in the night sky, but pondered what magic lurked behind his steel blue eyes.

“What you see is history. Look.” He pointed out through the stadium’s arched opening behind me, so I turned and followed his index finger with my eyes. The sky above the Mississippi River was jet black and punctuated with a multitude of shining stars surrounding a still-full moon.

“Nothing your eyes perceive is really there,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone, “because the light you’re seeing left those stars hundreds or thousands or maybe millions of years ago. Not only are the stars no longer where you see them, they may no longer exist as far as we know.”

He went on to explain that the stars were so far away, it took that long for their light to reach our planet. Therefore, looking at the night sky was, in effect, looking far into the distant past. If you extended the same logic, he reasoned, it was also true that what we witnessed taking place on the field happened before our eyes saw it in the stands—especially way up in the cheap seats.

I grasped his logic, but it didn’t begin to explain how he could see a play happen so long before it did. I think he understood my confusion, because he scooted forward in his chair and rested his hand gently on my arm.

“Think of it like a telescope,” he said, his voice now just above a whisper. “It’s hard to focus on a target when it’s so far away, like those stars, but every once in a great while what you seek comes into clear focus. Sometimes, you can see what you aren’t supposed to see.”

That’s about as far as Jake would ever go on his gift, but I got the sense he went further with me than he had with anyone before. I spent a lot of time with the old man over the next few summers, and often had coffee with him during the off-season. I learned little about his life, but a lot about the man. Over time I came to call him my friend and would have been proud to call him my father.

The last time I saw Jake was on Friday, August 15^th, 1980. Cubs versus Cardinals. Lynn McGlothen versus Silvio Martinez. My beloved Redbirds lost to the rival Cubs that day, but I lost far more than that.

Jacob Elias Mitchell, the world’s greatest scorekeeper, said he wasn’t feeling very well. He told me he wouldn’t be there for Saturday’s game, and to not count on him for Sunday either. I spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the final hours with my best friend.

Those events took place forty-five years ago, almost to the day, and I’m the old man now, sitting in the last row of Section 372 in the new Busch Stadium. My season ticket affords me an amazing view of downtown St. Louis and the familiar night sky.

A storm is brewing behind the right field bleachers as I watch the game, but I know it will miss us completely. I also know the game will go into extra innings, as I have, and that catcher Yadier Molina will win it for the Cardinals with a walk-off homerun in the thirteenth. I know that all thanks to Jacob Mitchell, just like I know I won’t be around to see Molina’s blast.

The attendant who picks up after EMT personnel leave with my lifeless body will likely toss my scorecard into the trash, not realizing it was completed accurately through the bottom of the thirteenth. If he happens to find this letter, I doubt he’ll notice it was signed by a dead man.

But there’s no time to concern myself with any of that right now. The ninth inning has ended in a 4-4 tie, a full moon has emerged from behind the storm clouds, and it’s time for extra innings.

END