I figure my quest to become a baseball fan is going nicely because for the first time, today, I felt unadulterated excitement about sitting in traffic, spending four hours at a crowded park, eating an insanely overpriced dinner, and freezing my butt off. I’m starting to feel like the A’s game is not only someplace to go, an outing. It’s where I belong.

I picked up my friend J. at five and we headed out to the game. We’d planned to eat beforehand, but a combination of inability to decide where to get dinner and excitement about the game put us at McAfee Stadium at around 5:30, just when the gates were opening. It was a pleasure to walk around the corridors of the park without being run over by people carrying twelve orders of ketchup laden garlic fries and small children dodging about like pin balls. We checked out our seats – section 115, 23 rows up, nearly behind home plate – and then headed over to the barbeque stand that is now my regular dinner spot. The place was alarmingly dark. A man poked his head from behind the window and explained that they had no power. They would be open shortly. All was not lost. We sat out above the third base line, in the rapidly disappearing sunlight, and talked baseball.

Unlike my usual companion, K., J. is no serious fan. But he likes to go to games and far more importantly, in contrast to the vegetarian K., he won’t go pale and threaten to vomit as I tear my barbecued chicken apart with a vengeful look on my face and blood, no, sauce, dripping down my chin. When the joint finally opened a half hour later we were the first customers. J. ordered the beef ribs, which looked damn good. Thankfully I’ll be back in a week or two. By the end of the summer I intend to have sampled everything on the menu.

J. bought a program and suggested we try to score the game. I thought, no. Absolutely not. I’m not ready. It was as if a first grade teacher had said, "Class, for our first reading lesson, I’m going to pass out copies of James Joyce’s classic experimental novel Finnegans Wake. No thank you. I’m not ready. I’m just starting to enjoy baseball. I’m reading a couple of very interesting books about the game, I’m talking to my friends who are fans, I’m going to games. I don’t want to pretend to be an expert before I’ve adequately prepared. I’m not ready. I’m not ready!

I said something like, "Sure, why not, sounds fun."

The program contains a one-page instruction sheet on how to score a game. Here’s the intro: “Baseball is the only sport that can be chronicled easily by fans both young and old. When you keep score you pay closer attention to every pitch, and you have a record of every play. It instantly turns your copy of Athletics Magazine [at a cost of five smackers] into a personal souvenir —allowing you to re-create the whole game long after it’s over. Plus, it’s fun!"

So says Athletics Magazine. I would not use the word fun. Terrifying, yes. Perspiration and possibly myocardial infarction inducing, certainly. But not fun.

We studied the guide to scoring. It’s like learning a new language, I suppose. If you start young, it must seem simple and obvious and hardly worthy of a doubled pulse rate. But to me it looked scary. Plus, whomever edits the A’s magazine ought not to have put the instruction sheet on the back of the score card, making it impossible to consult when you’re trying to score.

If you have no idea what scoring a game involves, the idea is that you mark down what happens during each offensive play. So, for example, if a batter hits a single, you fill in one side of a diamond, indicting he made it to first, and write “1B” to indicate a base hit. Each member of the defense has a number, so if the batter hits a grounder to third, and the third baseman throws him out at first, you write “GO 5-3”, to indicate a grounder to third, thrown to first for the out.

Seems simple enough, but believe me, it’s not. First of all, not only do you have to account for what the batter does, you also have to keep track of base runners. So if a runner at first goes to third on a base hit, you have not only to fill in the diamond and write “1B” for the hitter, you have to add to the runner’s diamond to make clear that he went two bases on the play. An RBI gets a little triangle in the corner of an already cramped scoring box. Errors, walks, intentional walks, fielder’s choices, stolen bases, wild pitches, passed balls, balks double plays, bunts, sacrifices---all must be accounted for.

All right, but so far this still seemed doable. Enough practice and it would become second nature. Plus, we were two people---we traded off between half innings, one guy watching to make sure he knew what was happening, and one guy with primary scoring responsibility.

Within a half inning, I, at least, was ready to forget scoring and go get several beers to assuage the anxiety that had accumulated during our brief effort. The Indians mounted a top-of-the-first offensive attack, which meant scoring several base runners simultaneously. And though some people complain that baseball is too slow, it didn’t seem at all slow when we were trying to get it all down. Perhaps the most annoying thing is that the players, rather thoughtlessly if you ask me, tend to move around on the field. So while it may seem reasonable to conclude that the person who picked up the grounder in front of second base was the second baseman (4), it may well be shortstop (6) or even the centerfielder (8). And the toss to first ought to be to the first baseman (3), but is often to the pitcher (1), who has cruised over from the mound to assist. Tell them to stay where they belong, that’s what I say.

I kept asking myself what difference it could possibly make. Enjoy it, Schaffer. Just try to enjoy the process. But I didn’t just want to try to score. I wanted to get it right. Very fortunately, J. didn’t abandon the project, as I would have done, the first time we got overwhelmed. He is an impressively calm human being.

Then the weirdest thing happened, which made scoring the game very difficult indeed. What the instruction sheet said was right: scoring forces you to really watch the game. You can’t let your concentration flag for five second because you’ll miss something, and missing even something, as opposed to many somethings, can screw with your whole inning. Everything on the card is interdependent. So distractions are extremely problematic.

And boy was I about to become distracted. In the middle of the second inning, Paris Hilton and a man I didn’t recognize, but who must be famous, sat right behind us. She was dressed in her usual underwear and pumps, which was damn impressive given that the fog had rolled in and I was already wearing my gloves and wool hat. I left J. to score while I listened to her conversation, her cell phone conversations, and to the sound of her chewing peanuts. It was maddening. I really wanted to score the game. I wanted to pay close attention to what was happening on the field. My reading told me to focus on where the defense plays each hitter because it will tell you what they are thinking about his potential. But, come on, I mean, Paris Hilton? Had she been in front of us I could have kept my eyes on her and still paid at least half attention to the game. But I kept having to pretend to be following non-existent foul balls to the upper deck to get a good look at her, to see what she was eating, to see the color of her fingernail polish.

I won’t say too much about what I learned about PH over the course of the night because, well, I don't know, it just seems wrong. I'm no paparazzi. Ms. Hilton wanted to see a ballgame and she ought to be able to do so without my invading her privacy. She seems genuinely to enjoy the game. I expected her to have a high voice, but it wasn't at all; it’s sort of low and rough. She ate a bag of peanuts and a Round Table pizza. At one point I leaned back to suggest that she try the churro ($3.50), but she said it reminds her too much of an old boyfriend. I said I could understand that, and I didn’t interrupt her again.

J. managed without me and his scorecard looks pretty good for a first try.