Randy Maniloff marks the 150th anniversary of organized professional baseball with a meditation on the box score — the oldest continuously produced data artifact in American sport.
Maniloff traces the first National League season of 1876 through Henry Chadwick's invention of the boxscore, to today's Statcast-era play-by-play, and argues baseball's durability lies precisely in the tension between numerate tradition and analytic disruption.
The Umpire Who Kept 3,000 Scorecards
The piece centers on an umpire from northern Philadelphia, Pat McLean, a former boxer who umpired 3,000 games at every level and kept every score sheet. The tactile record of the game, Maniloff argues, is what makes baseball analog in a way football and basketball can never be.
Why It Resonates Today
The league's first woman umpire, Jen Pawol, took the field this season. The moment would have been unimaginable in 1876 — but the box score she worked from was identical in structure.
What This Means For Our Portfolios
- Not a direct portfolio call. This is a tradition piece, not a thesis piece.
- Adjacent read: Entertainment & Live Events. MSG Entertainment, Live Nation, DraftKings. The WSJ noted earlier this week that sports-betting handle on MLB is up 22% YoY.
- For clients asking about nostalgic franchises (Disney, Warner, Paramount): the theme here is that durable brand equity is worth paying a multiple for — but the multiple is set by the distribution channel, not the archive.