It’s never easy being an official baseball scorer.
When Mark Frederickson scored the National League’s first ever combined no-hitter in 1991, which included a trifecta of Braves pitchers (Kent Mercker, Mark Wohlers and Alejandro Pena), it came down to what was a controversial call in the ninth inning. The Braves were playing the Padres, and Darrin Jackson hit a slow roller to Terry Pendleton at third. The ball took a big hop and Pendleton stabbed his glove at it, but did not make the play. Some writers in the press box questioned Frederickson’s error call to keep the no-hitter intact, but after the game he told The Associated Press. “He let it go by. Pendleton committed on the ball, and, if he would have gone ahead and made the play, he would have thrown him out.’’
Today, Frederickson, who works for Cox Communications, is retired from scoring, but scored hundreds of Braves games, including Game 6 of the World Series in 1995 when the team clinched what still is Atlanta’s only world championship.
Q: What does it mean to you having been the official scorer for this city’s only championship team?
A: I have lived my entire life in either DeKalb or Gwinnett County and it was the ultimate part-time job. I was like every other kid that played ball who wasn't good enough to make it to the big leagues. Being able to do that was very special.
Q: What do you remember about that 1995 Series?
A: The middle three games were in Cleveland, and I flew up on the administrative plane. I remember them putting us out where the Cavaliers played. The way it worked was there were three official scorers for the game. The Indians had their scorer, there was me and then the final one was the president of the Baseball Writers Association of America, who at the time was Paul Myers of the Pittsburgh Post.
Q: Do you remember any close calls from those six games?
A: Not really. In fact, I think there were only two or three calls the whole series that the three of us had to confer on and there were questions about.
Q: You talk about a story, however, after the Game 6 clincher that is pretty interesting.
A: I was at the postgame party down in the tent and (team president) Stan Kasten came up to me and asked me if I knew what the final score of the Hawks exhibition game was. Here we were, and Stan is thinking about a Hawks preseason game. But he was also president of the Hawks, so I went out to the road to use the payphone and find out. This was before cellphones and I make a call on the payphone and I hung up and there was a lady behind me and I said out loud that I couldn't believe the team president is worried about the Hawks after winning a world championship in baseball. The lady said, 'that sounds like my husband,' and sure enough it was Stan's wife, Helen.
