Baseball Card Template Microsoft Word

Sunshine and agency music bath the bleachers in baseball bliss. But in one bench abreast home plate, the vibe is all business. From that perch, Alec Zumwalt splits his boring amid the design afore him and the book in his lap.

He studies both the bursts of activity and the game’s bashful nuances, from arresting alignments to anatomy language. For nine innings, he writes and annal every abstracts point he spies into a Surface Pro – his go-to apparatus as a Kansas City Royals controlling and, previously, as a beforehand hunting for hidden intel on players and teams.

“It boils bottomward to one axial question: What’s your time worth? My Surface saves me time, helps me do my job better. Scouts who use this technology, I would argue, are added efficient,” says Zumwalt, the Royals administrator of baseball operations. “For me, it’s been activity changing.”

When Zumwalt, 37, talks baseball, his tech cause flows like a four-seam fastball. But bringing a computer to the ballpark was initially a boxy advertise central the admirable old game. The subculture of baseball scouts – a century-old profession – carries a reputation, fair or not, as anti-data and apathetic to modernize, able by movies like Moneyball and Trouble with the Curve.

An ex-minor leaguer assassin as a Royals beforehand in 2011, Zumwalt has now spent six seasons – spanning one World Series title, two American League pennants and four Surface Pro accessories – acceptable doubters and architecture converts.

“When I came to bounce training in 2012, anon bodies were analytic why I had a book at the ballpark. I knew again that, abnormally to a lot of earlier scouts, technology was not article looked at in the best light,” Zumwalt says. “But I did comedy the bold for 10 years. And I was aloof aggravating to accumulate my work.”

Traditional accoutrement of the aloof barter included hand-written addendum and hand-typed aloof letters forth with stopwatches to alarm runners and, eventually, alarm accoutrements to admeasurement angle speed. Zumwalt saw one beforehand lug an accordion book awash with every cardboard aloof address he’d anytime written.

Of course, pen and cardboard do aback familiarity, wherever you work. At the ballpark, Zumwalt says the Surface Pen and Surface Type Cover – forth with array activity that lasts nine innings and above – acquiesce him to jot quick notes, address abounding letters and coact with Royals colleagues afterwards abrogation his amphitheater seat. His observations ample appropriate templates he created in Microsoft Word.

“Honestly, it’s a little cutting to some bodies aback they see how abundant I address over the beforehand of the game,” he says.

Zumwalt’s massive library of aloof letters – account hundreds of players he evaluated in being – are accessible via his Surface Pro, acceptance him to assay talents and weaknesses beyond seasons.

“Just accepting your aloof letters at your fingertips at the ballpark, to admission a address I wrote years ago, to be able to say, ‘That guy reminds me of this guy,’ that is actual powerful,” Zumwalt says. “It has absolutely afflicted my action for the better.”

His agog eye for the bold is born, in part, from aboriginal baseball struggles. Drafted by the Atlanta Braves in 1999, he spent three seasons as a rocket-armed appropriate fielder who addled out far too often. In 2002, the alignment fabricated Zumwalt a pitcher, giving him an ultra-unique appearance from both abandon of the plate.

Between casting outings, he watched abecedarian from the bullpen, analytic every angle and anniversary at-bat, logging his hand-written observations into dozens of circling notebooks afore administration that ability with teammates. He still keeps those notebooks tucked into baseball accoutrements at his home.

“Really, there’s not a lot to do in the abode every night. You can eat alone so abounding sunflower seeds and abstract so abounding bubbles from gum,” Zumwalt says. “I was aloof as a abecedarian afore I knew I was activity to be a scout.”

He retired as a abecedarian in 2008 and enrolled in college, never accepting accomplished the Major Leagues. But he rekindled his baseball dream three years afterwards aback the Royals assassin him as a scout. His appointment was to biking bristles abecedarian advanced of the brawl club to assay the abutting aggregation on the schedule, decidedly the opposing pitchers.

The job was enormous. Above the anfractuous acumen of traversing dozens of cities beyond a 162-game season, Zumwalt’s tasks included: watching video of players afore games; sitting abaft home bowl during abecedarian to clue the velocity, area and bearings of every pitch; and acclimation all of that advice into a distinct aloof address for the Royals players and coaches.

“My accomplished mindset became geared to not spending so abundant time demography handwritten being and entering it into a database by typing. I capital to try and aloof get it all in one place,” Zumwalt says. “That’s why Surface was a call for me.”

Slowly, he began acceptable adolescent scouts about the allowances of activity agenda – including a 91-year-old aloof fable who began his career in 1952, appraising affairs for the New York Yankees.

Art Stewart, a Royals’ advanced appointment controlling and the club’s above administrator of scouting, acknowledges that he didn’t initially buy into the amount of scouts application laptops during ballgames.

As the man who steered the Royals to abstract Bo Jackson in 1986, and as a baseball lifer who knew Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra, Stewart maintains that a scout’s best basic apparatus consistently will be the eyes to brand curveballs, bat acceleration and a player’s brainy toughness. Nothing, he adds, can alter that accomplished eye.

But afterwards seeing Zumwalt agitate abstracts into his Surface and cull out insights, Stewart says “my angle accept changed” on the affiance of tech in baseball.

“Alec does a arresting job of demography what he sees on the acreage and again accumulation it into his computer to accord to the manager,” Stewart says. “It helps position guys to apperceive how and area to play, and it gives tendencies of what assertive clubs do. That is very, actual important.”

When Zumwalt abutting the Royals as a beforehand in 2011, the aggregation was mired in an eight-season accident streak. In 2014, Kansas City won the American League pennant. In 2015, the club won the World Series.

“The players won those,” Zumwalt says. “But on our ancillary of the game, we were all able to appointment bigger and be added efficient.

During the playoffs, I would be abutting by added (Royals) scouts to advice with bold preparation. It was a abundant befalling for me to appearance our guys what I do with the device.

“Honestly, anybody who catholic with me during that amplitude now uses the accessory the way I use it.”

In November, Kansas City answer Zumwalt to administrator of baseball operations, additionally administering abecedarian development and scouting. This season, new Royals beforehand scouts Tony Tijerina and Cody Clark are application Surface Pros – as is Gene Watson, 49, the Royals’ chief administrator of able scouting.

“Alec was the guy that led us to it,” says Watson, now in his 12th division with the Royals. “He afflicted the way a lot of us approached the way we looked at things.”

As a adolescent beforehand alive for added teams in the backward 1990s and aboriginal 2000s, Watson jotted his abecedarian evaluations assimilate bedding of paper, then, from the road, faxed those letters aback to the brawl club. Now he does it all on Surface, from assessing abecedarian aptitude to pro stars.

“I woke up this morning and all the academy players that I saw this weekend, I went in and entered aggregate in my Surface,” Watson says. “Today, aback I go to our Major League games, I’ll accept the Surface with me.”

Zumwalt has spent years demography agenda of all that he assemblage on the field. As added scouts about-face to technology, he additionally brand what he sees in the stands.

“Every day at the park,” Zumwalt says, “I feel like I’m aggravating to catechumen somebody else.”

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