@BillWheaton5048 is the same user as u/joe_skidiachi_irl on Reddit

cross reference:<br /> - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcgFizJWQoI <br /> - https://www.reddit.com/r/BaseballScorecards/comments/1rvm25m/comment/oatnbe4/

Mail Time March 2026<br /> by [[Joe Van Cleave]] on YouTube<br /> accessed on 2026-03-16T13:17:39

https://www.reddit.com/r/BaseballScorecards/comments/1mt1cuz/typewriter_experiment_4_the_index_card_multiple/

joe_skidiachi_irl experiment for baseball scorecards with typewriters.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BaseballScorecards/comments/1lp0m9y/typewriter_experiment_2_also_cin_6_bos_13_6302025/#lightbox

A free-form typewritten scorecard by u/joe_skidiachi_irl

https://www.reddit.com/r/BaseballScorecards/comments/1l9alpy/experiment_with_typewriter_scorecards_also_rays_1/

Example of using a typewriter and a roll of cash register paper to score a baseball game.

The majority of American machines (Royal, Remington, Smith-Corona) are 6 lines per inch and either 10 characters per inch (pica) or 12 CPI (elite). My guess would be that you'll see about 90% of people's machines covered across these specs with a roughly 60/40 split for pica vs. elite when it comes to planning print runs.

Most European machines are like the Olympias and are labeled as 2.3 m/m which when multiplied out (25.4mm/inch x 1 character/2.3mm) gives 11.043 CPI. Generally they're also 6 lines per inch. In the US, most of the common (and still popular) imported typewriters are going to be the Olympia SM2, SM3, SM4, SM7, and SM9s and the three incarnations of the Hermes 3000.

I've got a small collection of 50 mostly American machines across six decades with a few less common typefaces including Vogue, Gothic, and Congress Elite if you need some machines for nearby testing (I'm in Altadena, though temporarily still displaced). Most of my available machines are listed at https://typewriterdatabase.com/typewriters.php?hunter_search=7248

There are definitely some smaller 16, 18, 20, and even 24 CPI machines, but they tend to have come on the larger Olympia standards which weigh in at 30-40 pounds and are unlikely to be lugged to ballparks the way that smaller portables and ultraportables might be. There are some larger format 6 CPI machines, but they tend to be much rarer and are more often found on 1970s Smith-Coronas. If you want to go crazy, I'd guess you're aware of Ted Munk's collection of typefaces and catalogs that can be found at: https://typecast.munk.org/category/typewriter-typestylesfonts/

Incidentally, for fun, Bill Madden's book Yankees, Typewriters, Scandals, and Cooperstown: A Baseball Memoir is set for release tomorrow.

Since you sound like a local Dodgers fan, I'd love to invite you to the upcoming SoCal Type-in I'm planning for Saturday, May 10th at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena: https://boffosocko.com/2025/03/25/youre-invited-to-a-southern-california-type-in/ I hope you'll have some final versions available by then. 😍

reply posted 2025-04-01 at https://old.reddit.com/r/BaseballScorecards/comments/1jn2475/yes_tom_hanks_does_schlep_a_typewriter_to_ball/

If you're curious about some of the technical details and how the are affected by the distribution of typefaces and sizes, I laid out some of them the other day: https://www.reddit.com/r/BaseballScorecards/comments/1jn2475/comment/mks9rbc/

Lou also has some great examples of scorekeeping across display sizes and level of data in his offerings at https://thirty81press.com/.

The broader issue for most scorers is the limitation to 8.5 x 11" paper which is the most common page size for the ubiquitous portable and ultraportable typewriters from the mid-century. While there are some portables with carriages and platens that might accomodate up to 12" wide paper, they're not super common.

To get machines with wider platens to get 11x14 or 11x17, you're going to need the significantly larger standard machines and unless you're rich enough to have a suite that you can securely store one in or a journalist with your own booth, not many baseball fans are going to cart a 35-45+ pound typewriter with them to all their games. Though this wouldn't prevent the fan viewing at home from scoring this way easily. My example above was done on a standard width carriage on a standard machine, but I did have several options to do it on a 12", 14", and even two 16" standard typewriters. Interestingly, most of my larger carriage machines are elite 12/6 (12CPI with 6 lines/inch) formats, and I don't think Lou has designed yet for that standard which would allow for an additional 15 characters to be distributed amidst the columns (while still keeping a minimum of 1/2" margins for some balanced white space). I'll be tinkering around with some of this myself in the coming week or so on 11x14" paper using a 15" wide platen on an elite machine to see how things might look.

Perhaps a modified format at 8.5 x 11 that alternates the teams and splits a 12 inning game format across three sheets so that the typist can type down a single page without swapping sheets every half inning and realigning their page every time? But this would cause a lot of formating change versus traditional layouts to do so.

I've also been tinkering with using small space characters like the - and the _ to indicate data (with or without the use of the variable line spacing mechanism) for things like tracking RBIs. The underline is particularly useful for this in Lou's three space layout.