New Halfliner Scorebook Makes Scoring Baseball Games Easier

Sometimes a long-standing tradition needs a reboot (for instance, TV's first Superman had a beer gut).

Bethany Heck was one of a countless number of baseball fans to have used a simple scorebook to keep track of the action in a baseball game in the past 150 years. While the old style of scorebook was effective, Heck, a graphic designer, knew it wasn't visually appealing and could be made better. So, she changed it.

As Heck's senior project at Auburn University in 2011, she handed out 900 re-engineered scorebooks and processed the information into a redesigned scorebook.

“I’ve had so many people tell me that it was their first scorebook or that they taught their kids to keep score with it,” Heck sais. “When people who have one spot someone else with one they often end up interacting, which I love.”

After selling more than 3,000 scorebooks and gathering two years of feedback, Heck launched a Kickstarter for a second iteration: the Eephus League HalfLiner Scorebook. She hopes to get the new scorebooks into the hands of fans by baseball's all-star break in July.

The new Eephus League HalfLiner Scorebook allows fans to score the game in their own way, capture weather conditions, where they sat, offer player evaluations and much more. The HalfLiner scorebook is smaller in overall size than standard scorebooks for increased portability, but its pages offer more innings, more substitution slots, more columns for stats and more room to work. Additionally, the HalfLiner scorebook has a chipboard cover for durability and support.

The HalfLiner scorebook is a very cool re-imagining of the traditional baseball scorebook. About the only things missing are a cup holder and a mustard dispenser, but given Heck's attention to detail and design, we wouldn't be surprised to see those features included in the next variation of the HalfLiner scorebook.