J.J. Guinozzo: The ALWS 'scoring czar'

More than 50 years ago, John Guinozzo was a freshman playing high school football and baseball. Then he got hurt and faced one of life’s many crossroads.

“When you get to be a sophomore, you either go down this path, which is corrupt, or you stay in athletics or organized school structure,” Guinozzo said. “The (high school) athletic director/football/baseball coach knew my grandparents. So he gave me a scorebook and said, ‘You’re our official scorer.’

“You always kept score – Xs and Os and stuff – but what I did is I skipped school on a Monday or Tuesday, took a bus downtown, bought a rule book and came back to school the next day. In English class I had the rule book in my (school book) and had the teacher ask me what I thought about ‘The Scarlet Letter.’ I swear I would have said ‘6-4-3 double play.’”

That sent Guinozzo down the path of official scorekeeping, something he has done an estimated 6,000 games since 1964. And since 1972, Guinozzo has been scoring American Legion World Series games. The total: 666 games, or 65.8 percent of all ALWS games ever played. He’d like to hit 700 games before he retires.

Known affectionately as “J.J.”, he’s listed as “scoring czar” in the official American Legion World Series handbook. He scored his first championship game in 1972 when the tournament’s undefeated team lost, forcing a game the next day, and rain postponed the championship one more day.

“All of the (ALWS) volunteers had to go back to wherever they worked,” said the 68-year-old Guinozzo, who lives in Memphis and for years was a supervisor in the Commercial Appeal sports department. “So (American Legion Baseball National Director) George Rulon said, ‘Would you oversee the press box?’

“In December, I get a letter from the (Legion’s) Americanism Commission to be official scorer, press box coordinator, whatever. I said, ‘Wow. Now I’ve got to save my money to go to Lewiston, Idaho.’ Well, I didn’t read the second page that said, ‘We’ll pay you.’ Since that time, I guess I’ve done the right thing.”

In 1985, Guinozzo spent more than a week at the Legion’s National Headquarters in Indianapolis going over past World Series scorebooks to compile what became the official record book. He only got about a third of the way through before having to head back home, so Rulon sent all of the materials to Guinozzo’s home.

“I have three file cabinets at home,” he said. “When I die, they have a blue dot on them that says, 'Send to American Legion Baseball.'”

The record book, which took three years to complete, is an invaluable resource to media covering the World Series. Though Guinozzo has committed much of the information in it to memory, the World Series isn’t just facts and figures to him. Walk through one of the team hotels or at Keeter Stadium in Shelby, N.C., and one can see Guinozzo chatting with baseball players 50 years his junior. He develops relationships with them and their parents that continue long after the Series ends.

“All my life I’ve worked with high school students, and this is the last step (in being) a purely amateur athlete,” Guinozzo said. “When they have (World Series) orientation … and introduce me, I tell them I’m ‘Juicy J’ and that breaks the ice. It opens up the players to me to talk to, meet their parents and stuff like that.”

He’s also developed strong relationships with other World Series staff members and volunteers. “If you look at a map, probably there are people in every state – they know me and I know them,” he said. “That’s a good thing because I don’t have a family. It’s like a family reunion here. I enjoy that."

Guinozzo now runs a stats crew in Memphis that handles sports ranging from minor league baseball to college football to NBA games. That helps pass the time and makes it easier to leave his Legion Baseball family when the Series ends.

"But I jump right into baseball Wednesday, Thursday (and) Friday, and then I’ll have college football and high school football starting next week. I’ll be busy.”