In a column last month, I wrote about the system in which Major League Baseball accepts appeals from clubs of official scorers’ rulings.

I offered two criticisms of the system: 1, I don’t care for someone (Joe Torre, executive vice president of baseball operations) sitting in an office and determining whether a play was a hit or an error by watching video replays), and 2, I especially don’t care for MLB keeping Torre’s decisions secret.

Nothing has changed with the system since the column appeared here, but it prompted an e-mail from Bruce Winkworth of Raleigh, N.C., who offered a candid insight into the job of an official scorer. I reprint it here:

I’ve been an official scorer at the college and minor league level since 1984, and I’ve heard it all from players, coaches and managers. Some of the crap I’ve heard is genuinely mind-bending. As Mark Twain wrote in “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” “It’s enough to make a body ashamed of the whole damned human race.”

The first one I used to get from Durham Bulls players was: We get hammered on every close call on the road so we should get those calls at home. After checking with the other official scorers around the league, I realized all scorers get this same line of b.s., and it’s nothing more than whining. Players are good at whining.

Then there was the minor league pitching coach who would come out onto the field from time to time to scream at the press box when he disagreed with a call, invariably a hit that he thought should have been an error. Many times after games he would get in my face, nose to nose, and scream at me over calls he didn’t like. I won’t mention his name but he went on to become pretty famous in the big leagues. The minor league rule that prohibits pitching coaches from speaking to official scorers is often attributed to him as the _____ _____ Rule. To this day, I wish him nothing but the very worst.

One year, 1991 or 1992 I believe, the home team manager would call the press box after every game and tell me which calls to change. He didn’t ask me to change them. He didn’t suggest that I change them. He didn’t open the floor to discussion. He just told me to change them. And after a few homestands of this, I pretty much ignored him. And never heard a follow-up about it. He was, of course, a former pitcher and pitching coach. He got out of baseball a few years later and became a sales manager for the local NHL team. No idea what he’s doing now. Don’t care to know.

My college coach used to love to ask me to change an error to a hit because the hitter “is struggling and it would really give his confidence a boost if that was a hit.” (Laugh out loud here). I told him that if the guy truly wanted to boost his confidence, tell him to try hitting a few balls onto the outfield grass. I got this request from him three or four times a year. He never understood why I thought it was ridiculous.

A few years ago, the same coach asked me to stop calling so many errors on our defense because he didn’t want them to think they were bad defensive players. This was a genuinely bad team and pretty much all of them stunk defensively. And they knew they stunk, too. No way to hide that. And on a road trip about two weeks later they went and committed nine errors in a game, eight of them IN THE SAME INNING. Damnedest thing I ever saw. That ended any talk about whether or not that was a bad defensive team.

One year, we had a shortstop whose father would call me in the office the day after to complain about error calls against his son. He wasn’t at the games, mind you. He lived an hour away by plane, seven hours by car, and he only made it to about a third of our home games. But that didn’t stop him from calling me. And he was really cutesy about it, starting off the conversation with some small talk and then easing into the game the night before, and finally getting around to the offending scoring decision, and “why did you call that an error, anyway?” He also called frequently to complain about the game recaps on the school website, which he claimed were too negative. Our pitching coach finally called him and let him have it. The calls stopped after that. Probably the last time in history that a pitching coach ever came to the defense of an official scorer. Certainly it was the last in my experience.

My last few years on the job, we hired a third base coach and recruiting coordinator who actually had no agenda about scoring decisions and was a great sounding board when others on the staff lobbied for a change. He became my go-to guy on any and all changes and he would give me an honest and well-informed opinion, which was invaluable. He may be the only one in the entire profession, however, at least in college. They’re all crazy, they all have an agenda, and they don’t give a (damn) about whether the call is right or not. That’s the last thing on their mind.

When I finally retired but opted to stay on to do the scoring (they’re paying me), I told the kid who replaced me that I really don’t care one way or the other about changing calls. As long as I get paid, it’s not my problem. I told him just to make sure they have a valid reason for making a change, and not to worry about my feelings. My skin is thicker than that. But it is sad that something that has no bearing on the outcome of a game makes so many people act so poorly. Mark Twain hit the nail on the head.

I can appreciate Winkworth’s view of the players, managers and club officials he has had to deal with, but he should be thankful that he has never had to endure the profane verbal abuse that Graig Nettles, the former third baseman, inflicted on scorers.