Editing Official scorer (section)

===Early controversies===
{{cquote|It's always safer to call it a hit. The batting team is happy, and the fielding team can be ambivalent ... But you have to make the proper call.<ref name="Minpost">{{cite news |title=Meet the guys who hold Major League Baseball's most thankless job (other than the umpires) |first=Pat |last=Borzi |url=http://www.minnpost.com/stories/2009/07/27/10473/meet_the_guys_who_hold_major_league_baseballs_most_thankless_job_other_than_the_umpires |newspaper=Minnesota Post |date= July 27, 2009 |access-date=October 28, 2010}}</ref>|4=Stew Thornley|5=official scorer}}
Baseball writer-scorers usually worked at the games played at the home stadium of the team which they covered for their newspaper. The writer-scorers were tasked with making objective decisions that could impact the statistics of the team they were writing about. Because of this affiliation, the official scorer was often presumed by the baseball players and managers to favor the home team when making the required judgment calls during the course of a game.<ref name="SI1978" /><ref name="MLBstory">{{cite web |url=http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20040907&content_id=850056&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=null |title=For Those Keeping Score... |first=Anthony |last=Castrovince |date=September 7, 2004 |work=MLB.com |access-date=October 28, 2010}}</ref><ref name="SI1968">{{cite magazine |url=http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1081165/1/index.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121103135634/http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1081165/1/index.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=November 3, 2012 |title=Some Who Know the Score |first=Joe |last=Jares |date=May 13, 1968 |magazine=Sports Illustrated |access-date=October 28, 2010}}</ref>

Criticism of scoring decisions date to the earliest days of the game. Some historians claim that [[Joe DiMaggio]]'s record [[Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak|56-game hitting streak]] in 1941 was made possible by several generous rulings at [[Yankee Stadium (1923)|Yankee Stadium]].<ref name="MLBstory" /> In 1953, [[Al Rosen]] narrowly missed being recognized for achieving a rare "[[Major League Baseball Triple Crown|triple crown]]" in hitting after a questioned error caused him to finish the season one hit short of winning the [[American League]] batting title.<ref name="MLBstory" />

Although scoring decisions were widely believed to favor the [[Batting (baseball)|hitter]] over the [[Position player|defense]], many players believed this bias shifts in favor of the [[pitcher]] when he carries a no-hitter (where a pitcher throws a complete game without giving up a hit) into the late [[inning]]s.<ref name="SI1978" /><ref name="SI1968" /> [[Infielder]] [[Davey Johnson]] said, "I've been involved in five or six no-hit games, and all of them were suspected of being helped by hometown scoring."<ref name="SI1978" /> One of the last controversies of the writer-scorer era was seen in a 1978 game at St. Louis. In that game, [[St. Louis Cardinals|St. Louis]] pitcher [[Bob Forsch]] was pitching a no-hitter in the 8th inning against [[Philadelphia Phillies|Philadelphia]] when a hard ground ball hit into the hole between [[shortstop]] and third was narrowly missed by [[third baseman]] [[Ken Reitz]]. The official scorer [[Neal Russo]] (who was a writer for a local newspaper) judged the play to be an error rather than a hit, and Forsch went on to pitch the first no-hitter of the 1978 season.<ref name="SI1978" />