Expert: Steve L - 3/22/2005

Question
Hello and thank you for your time,
   Would you kindly tell me how long the K has been used as a symbol for a strikeout when scoring a baseball?  A friend suggested that  the K represented Koufax and began to be used at Shea Stadium when he was pitching.  I insisted that the use of K went way back further than the 1960's.
    Also, when did fans begin the practice of draping K posters for all to see, each time a pitcher made a strike out?
    Thanks so much,   Carol  

Answer
Koufax's name will always be synonymous with "strikeouts," but the use of "K" for strikeout goes back much further

Henry Chadwick, one of the first newspaper journalists to take a literary interest in baseball, built upon a scoring technique devised by fellow New York journalist M. J. Kelly. "Chadwick created a minutely detailed scorecard so he would have a point of reference and recollection when he wrote his articles about the game."

Chadwick invented the modern boxscore back in the 1860s.

Chadwick also invented the system we use to indicate fielders (pitcher=1, shortstop=6, right field=9, etc.), and the abbreviations we use for events (HR, HBP, BB, so on).

Chadwick needed "S" for sacrifice, so he chose K for strikeout - K being the last letter of "struck," which was then in more common use than the term "strikeout."

Some people carry it further, using a K for a swinging strikeout, and a backward K for being caught looking. Some folks go with the more intuitive "SO," but this creates confusion with the abbreviation for "shutout," so "K" has remained the abbreviation of choice.

I don't know when fans began draping K posters over the railing, but my guess would be that it started at Shea, where fans have always seemed more interested in posing for the tv cameras than in watching the action on the field.