SABR 54: Listen to highlights from Billy Altman’s presentation, Learning the Score: Bats, Balls, and Rock & Roll
On Saturday, August 1, 2026, Billy Altman gave a presentation on “Learning the Score: Bats, Balls, and Rock & Roll” during the SABR 54 convention at the Hilton Cleveland Downtown hotel in Cleveland, Ohio.
Altman is an award-winning cultural journalist, critic and historian; a founding curator of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland; and an official scorer for Major League Baseball at New York Mets and Yankees games since 2004.
- Audio: Click here to listen to Billy Altman’s presentation, “Learning the Score,” at SABR 54 (58:45; MP3)
Here are some highlights:
On changing calls as an official scorer
- “You have up to 24 hours to change a call. With all the betting and everything, we’re encouraged to make calls as quickly as we can. You want to make sure you made the right call. Sometimes you might not see that a ball takes a bad hop. We can always look at a replay, if we’re not sure about a call. But you have to make the call first. And sometimes a media member will call or they call us from the dugout and ask us to take a second look at a play, and we’re happy to do so. The players are also able to do an appeal if they want to. It goes in front of a committee. You have to have a thick skin to do this job.”
On baseball and music connections
- “I got to be good friends with Mike Piazza. He liked a lot of hair metal, Guns N’ Roses, Ratt, Poison, Motley Crue. In 2004, the Beastie Boys put out an album called To the 5 Boroughs, which they dedicated to New York after 9/11. And they had one song called “3 the Hard Way” and in the middle of this song, they rhymed Piazza with matzah. I got an advance on this and I’m in the Mets clubhouse and I say, ‘Mike, you got a shoutout on a Beastie Boys song.’ And he said, ‘Dude, no way!’ And I said, ‘Yes, way!’ So I got the record company to send Jay Horwitz, the Mets’ PR guy, a copy of the CD. I walk into the Mets clubhouse during their next homestand and as I’m walking in, I get punched in the right shoulder. I turn around and it’s Piazza. He says, ‘Dude, way!’ “
On opening the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
- “When the Rock Hall opened in 1995, we were all coming out from New York to Cleveland. I’d been writing for Rolling Stone since 1974. And whenever I went up to the office to deliver a review, [magazine co-founder] Jann Wenner came up to me and said, ‘Hi, I’m Jann Wenner.’ And this went on every time. ‘Hi, I’m Jann Wenner.’ When the Rock Hall opened in 1995, they had a walk-through for us. We’re going down the escalator, and Jann Wenner is down there with one of his sons. We get to the bottom and Jann walks over and he says, ‘Billy, great to see you. You guys did a great job.’ And later I said, ‘I’ve known Jann Wenner for 20 years and this is the first time he’s ever remembered my name.’ And my friend looks at me and he says, ‘Billy, we’re wearing name tags.’ ”
For more coverage of SABR 54, visit SABR.org/convention.
Originally published: August 10, 2026. Last Updated: August 10, 2026.