The Cup Game — sometimes called Pass the Hat — is a long-running tradition at baseball games of all levels, from Little League bleachers to the upper deck of a major league park. A cup (or a hat, or whatever's handy) gets passed around a group, and every play on the field changes what happens to it. A strikeout might mean everyone tops it off. A double play might mean it doubles. A home run might mean whoever's holding it gets to keep the whole thing. The exact rules have always varied from group to group and stadium to stadium, which is part of the fun — but it's also exactly why games fall apart by the fifth inning. Someone loses count, someone swears they already paid in this half-inning, and the whole thing dissolves into an argument instead of a game.
This site exists to fix that one problem: keeping score. Everything else about the game — who plays, how many points are on the line, what a "walk" means to your group — is still entirely up to you.
Start on the Play page and enter the name of every player in your group. You'll need at least two. Once your lineup is set, tap Play ball to open the scoreboard.
At the start of each half-inning, every player antes a set number of points into the cup — 1 point by default, though you can change this in the Rules panel. Tap Start next half-inning to collect the ante and move play forward. Innings run in the order you'd expect: Top of the 1st, Bottom of the 1st, Top of the 2nd, Bottom of the 2nd, and so on, advancing automatically every time you tap the button.
Whoever is "at bat" is shown at the top of the scoreboard. As the real game unfolds, tap whichever outcome just happened. The site instantly updates the cup total, the standings, and moves the turn along. Here's what each play does by default — every one of these numbers and behaviors can be changed in the Rules panel to match how your group has always played:
If a big play (like a home run) empties the cup completely, the site automatically re-antes everyone and shows a quick on-screen notice so play can keep moving without anyone having to stop and figure out what just happened.
Every group plays this game a little differently, so nothing here is locked in. Tap Rules from the scoreboard to open the settings panel, where you can adjust the ante amount, the starting inning (handy if you're picking up a game already in progress), and every individual event — how many points it moves, whether it pays in or takes out, whether it passes the turn, and whether it's allowed to sweep the whole cup.
Agree on your house rules before the first pitch, especially anything unusual your group has always done (some tables give the last batter of an inning a "double ante," for instance). Keep one phone as the official scorekeeper for the group so there's a single source of truth. And remember — the cup total and standings are just points on a screen; what they represent between friends is entirely up to you. If your group tends to find baseball a little slow, see 7 ways to make any game more fun for more ideas beyond just this game.