Coming soon? Death of the box score

Is the end near for these things?

The baseball box score, a longtime staple of the newspaper sports section, may be disappearing.

Before the Internet and cable TV, the box score was really the only way to track out-of-town games or relive the local squad’s contest.

But newspaper monitor Jim Romenesko reports today that the Charlotte Observer has dropped box scores from the sports section.

Is that the sound of a domino?

“As a move into the digital age, we’re dropping Major League Baseball box scores from the printed newspaper,” sports editor Mike Persigner wrote on Facebook. “We will still devote similar space to baseball, just with more notes and feature stories. Still, there will be calls. Pray for me.”

Maybe not. There wasn’t a single comment on the newspaper’s website about the move.