Round the Horn

Ken’s Story
The next year the Auburn Midgets Legion baseball team won the state championship at St. Paul. Sam was nicknamed “Round the Horn” by Neal Thomas, the PA announcer, because he was so insistent on enforcing that age-old routine, even during practice. He still has the batting helmet with that nickname inscribed on it.

Sam’s Version
Dad should mention that I was the team scorekeeper and statistician. I still have in my wallet the pass from the 1972 State Tournament. It says “Scorekeeper”. I was even named to the All-State team, as scorekeeper.

I loved to play baseball. But the new season came too soon after my surgery in eighth grade, so I took up scorekeeping, telling everyone that I had lost my glove and outgrown my cleats.

The nickname “’Round the Horn” actually came from Dale Thomas, the youngest and cockiest of Neal’s four sons. He was our batboy. It was during my first game in uniform as a scorekeeper, the first game of the season, at Hamburg, Iowa. The coaches were teaching me how to keep the scorebook. I dutifully marked the balls and strikes, a big BB in the box for “base on balls”. The next pitch was a ground ball to the second baseman and a double play. The coach instructed, “that’s 4-6-3 DP”, second to short to first for two outs. When I looked up from writing this in the scorebook, the team was tossing the ball around the horn while the next batter stepped into the box. Dale came up to me and said, “So write that down.”

“Write what down?”

“When they throw the ball ‘round the horn.”

“Uh.”

“Don’t you know anything?” He said this sarcastically, as if a fifth-grader new sarcasm. “RTH with a circle around it.”

I started to do this, paused, and looked at the coach. He nodded, “If they go first to short to second to third draw the circle counterclockwise with an arrow. If they go third to second to short to first, draw the arrow clockwise.”

I didn’t take me too long to figure out this was a big tease, but for the rest of the game, from the end of the bench or while running out to get a bat, Dale would shout, “Hey, ‘Round the Horn, how do you score that?”