Column: For the love of the box score

Published 1:26 am Sunday, May 3, 2015

When baseball season started, I didn’t give much thought to the inclusion of baseball box scores on the Post’s sports pages.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate a box score. I just don’t seek it. I prefer a story or a brief to mining numbers. That, however, is just my style.

Well, plenty of readers asked about the lack of those precious statistical reports from the pages of the Salisbury Post’s sports section. You asked and asked and asked and asked. Trust me when I say the message did not fall on deaf ears.

It was brought up to me in phone calls and emails. Mike London was asked about it at games. It was brought to the attention of Editor Elizabeth Cook. I remember there was at least one letter to the editor on the subject.

It was a surprise to see the amount of interest the Post received on this. I am definitely from the Internet age. If I want to find a box score, I visit the team’s website, the league’s website, or a host of other sports media outlets on the web.

On Saturday, you received, and you shall keep on receiving.

First off, thank you for hanging in there with us. We had to adjust the formatting of the box score in our design program, something I failed to foresee before the start of the season, as we tried to get them on the page. It took us longer than expected to figure it out.

As I told readers who emailed and called, we cannot run every box score every day. We don’t have the space to accommodate a full slate of major league games and still fill our pages with the major sports news of the day.

We also feature local schools and local athletes on the sports pages over national news.

Secondly, running of full box scores begins and ends with the major leagues.

For years, the Post ran full box scores for local high school and college baseball games in the past. That, unfortunately, is not in the cards anymore.

Don’t worry fans. We will still make it to as many area games as possible and feature as many local athletes as we can.