The smell of the freshly mown grass, the feel of fresh dirt through your fingers and the crack of the bat --- it's baseball season. And with that comes another geek must-have application.

ScorePAD ($149.95) from ScorePAD Sports Inc. has replaced that old, archaic scorebook you've been lugging to ball games with an easy-to-use application for your Palm handheld computer and your desktop PC.

No more indecipherable scribbles to interpret, no more erasing until you tear a hole in the page --- this nifty little piece of software lets you track a bevy of stats with just a tap or a keystroke. And you can even track the progress of your favorite Major League players.

This allows coaches, from Little League to the pros, to maintain their official scorebook. But it does more than just track hits, runs and errors. The deluxe version of the software will also track things we wouldn't even think of scoring, such as base path violations or dropped third strikes.

The software was pretty easy to install. I just had to download it from www.scorepad.com, enter a serial number and ID and I was ready to go. Plus the company offers a 30-day free trial, which allows coaches and baseball fans alike to try it before they buy it.

Among its key features are:

• It can produce box scores, scoresheets, game reports and sortable statistics pages.
• Game information can be easily shared with other coaches, teams or baseball enthusiasts by beaming, e-mailing or posting the data.
• You can go back and correct errors by simply clicking on the play you wish to change.
• Everything is done directly on the PDA, from tracking pitches to errors.
• You can hotsync your data to store it on your PC for later reference or to upload to the Web.
• There's a daily MLB.com update service that automatically tracks roster changes on your favorite teams and tracks stats of all the players.

Of course there are a few unusual uses for the software, such as using your PDA as a mini radar gun to track the speed of pitches (you actually tap the device once when the pitch is delivered and tap again when it passes home plate), or becoming an expert in baseball trivia using its Major League Baseball All-Time Records program.

But what really sold me on this application was when I saw several high school baseball and softball coaches using it on the sidelines to track their players' progress.

More information on ScorePAD and the 30-day free trial can be found at www.scorepad.com.

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