Keeping score

The secret language that's almost as old as the game itself

No one did more to help popularize baseball in the 19th century than Henry Chadwick, regarded by many as “the Father of Baseball.”

Have you heard the one about…

…the Englishman who created the language of baseball we still use today?

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Long before highlight shows, boxscores on your phone or even radio broadcasts, the only way to truly keep a baseball game was to write it down. Every pitch wasn’t just watched—it was translated. Into symbols. Into numbers. Into a kind of shorthand that turned 9 innings into a story you could hold in your hands.

And like most things in baseball, it started with one person who saw the game a little differently than everyone else.