Most women play slow pitch. I managed a womens team and we travelled aroun playing tournaments. It was high quality athletes playing against high quality athletes. They did not hit 300 foot homers ,but other than that it was very high quality.
Thanks. 
That is exactly what I was asking.
You’re concentrating only on the ball itself. While that’s a valid point, it’s incidental.
Softball is the preferred game of choice at elite female levels not because of the size of the ball but because of the size of the FIELD. It happens that, for a variety of reasons, softball has evolved a much smaller field (65 feet between bases, IIRC) than baseball, which brings in 90-foot basepaths by the time the players are 13-14 or so.
Going to baseball would have no negative effect on the women’s ability to grip the ball; it would, however, expose them to a vastly larger ball diamond. On a softball diamond a third baseman’s typical throw to first is about 85-95 feet; on a baseball diamond it’s 120-130 feet, a fairly significant difference and, as it happens, the difference between 90 and 120 feet is where a lot of people can no longer throw a ball with any sort of accuracy or speed. Even at the level of pro baseball many fine players don’t have the arm strength to make accurate and reliable throws from the third base position; that’s why third basemen tend to be big, strong guys with great arms. The difference in the shortstop’s throws aren’t much less dramatic.
A lot of women players’ arms would be exposed as too weak to play the infield (some women could still make the toss, of course, but many, especially in younger levels, could not) and since the number of balls hit into the outfield would go down substantially, the importance of outfield defense would go down. Infield hits would become routine occurrences.
So it’s not that women play softball because of the softball. They play softball because the rules of play and dimensions of the field are much easier to play in. That’s also why more adult men play softball than baseball, and why co-ed leagues are almost always softball and slo-pitch. A men’s slo-pitch league - and at the A-B levels, let me tell you, those guys can really play some ball - has the same infield dimensions, because a baseball field would just be too hard to handle for casual/semi-serious players. Take it from a guy who’s played third base in both baseball and softball; the difference in difficulty that the field size makes is ENORMOUS.
Now, if you were to argue that elite women ballplayers should play baseball anyway and they should, if need be, just make the bases 75 feet apart or something, I’d be all for that. I’d also agree that at the NCAA level, the 45-foot pitching distance is becoming a bit silly.
But the bigger ball is not incidental. I doubt a baseball player could throw a softball across the larger baseball field. The size of the ball almost requires a smaller field.
OK, I was thought he was asking why boys and girls don’t play together.
My other statement about ball speed may still be an issue. Can girls react quickly enough to a baseball off an aluminum bat? Around here, we use metal bats though high school, if not college.
And two years before *that * in this thread that I started.
Holy cow yes! I knew a jr high/high school coach who used a radar gun to see if the best pitcher from the girl’s softball team at the HS he worked at could pitch faster than the best pitcher from the baseball team. I don’t remember how fast the pitch was, but he said he thought he saw warp trails following the softball!
[a bit exaggerated but you know what I mean]
Everything you say about the size of the field is right, but your final point sort of negates it all.
There’s no reason, as you suggest, that women can’t play baseball on a field with slightly smaller dimensions. And i’m not sure it would even need to be that much smaller. In its last season, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was playing on a field where the bases were 85’ apart, and the pitcher was throwing 60’ from the mound to the plate (Link). I’m not sure what effect this had on scoring, or the overall entertainment level of the game.
And for me, there’s no “should” about it. If women want to play softball, more power to them. I happen to love playing softball. I’m just arguing that there’s no reason they can’t play baseball. Sure, the rhythm and development of the game might differ as a result of their lesser strength and power, but it would still be baseball. The same thing happens in tennis, and in fact i think that watching women play tennis is often more interesting than watching some men play, precisely because each point is less likely to be determined by a 140+mph serve.
Results from marathons, triathlons, and other endurance events, mostly.
Also from rowing and weightlifting competitions and what have you.
The gap between male and female athletes is shrinking. While I don’t think that it is universally applicable, it is my somewhat informed opinion that there will be gender parity in certain sports in two or three generations. Because of advances in social thought, understanding of female endurance, training techniques, and what have you, the gap between the top man in an event and the top woman is smaller than it has ever been. I believe that a woman will beat the entire field at the Boston Marathon before I die.
It’s my theory that “they” made a “dainty baseball” for the poor little girls to play- and then the girls started adapting to the game. I sure wouldn’t dig in against Monica Abbott, and I’ll bet that whoever invented softball did not design the game with her in mind.
More like a bit unreal/imaginary. In athletics, women can’t throw anything faster than a man, period. Stop fooling around.
So along these lines is kosher for the WNBA lower the basket to 8’? See where I’m going here? Baseball is baseball, basketball is basketball. Nobody wants to watch an inferior variation thereof, unless their kid is in it or they have a vested interest, i.e. TITLE IX.
Nope, they still aren’t close. Take out the 'roids, and the gap is worse. Sure, you can train up a gal and close the gap a bit, but men are more athletic than women, and will be forever unless evolution evens the field. Nuture can’t magically do it alone, mate.
Why would anyone be less likely to watch women play baseball than to watch women play softball? This whole thread has nothing to do with how many people would want to watch the game; it has to do with why women play softball instead of baseball. As i said before, and as you conveniently chose to ignore, the fact that women might not play baseball as well as men is no reason for them not to play baseball.
In fact, your own question about basketball helps demonstrate my point. Women’s basketball is not as fast as men’s, and there’s no way the women could beat the men. Yet, lo and behold, women still manage to play basketball. Isn’t it a miracle!
What is the point you’re trying to make here, Operation Ripper? People are discussing why women traditionally play softball rather than baseball, and you keep hammering the point that women are just inferior to men in athletics, and there’s nothing we can do even if we wanted it to be otherwise, nyah-ah! Well, if you’re correct (and you probably are, although I’m willing to believe that the performance gap is shrinking), what’s that supposed to do? And furthermore, what does it have to do with the fact that women traditionally play softball rather than baseball, which is, after all, the subject of this thread?
Did you lose your place in a team to some airheaded cheerleader because of gender quotas? 
Yeah, that was my thought. He certainly seems to have some sort of hard-on for Title IX.
Well, no. I think if you review my posts it is clear they were made reflexively to pc posts containing silly conclusions made by essesentially nutty 70’s feminists/revisionists/apologists, ala Billy Jean King, sponsored by the OP, that incorporated notions along the lines that quantitative qualities of athletic women have essentailly begun to equal those of men over the last few decades despite millenia of evolutionary process. My position is that this is utter nonsense.
People would be less likely to watch a women’s baseball game than a softball game because they could watch a superior men’s baseball game. Or so the thinking goes.
Operation Ripper, it wasn’t said that there no gap between men and women, it was said that it’s shrinking. That’s true. I don’t think it’s true that it’ll ever close, and I would love to find somebody that would bet me about a woman winning a large marathon, but to say that the gap isn’t changing is ridiculous.
Well yeah, Title IX is shit, frankly.
No.
Your post #51 was in direct response to me, and i have never made a single claim in this thread that women are equaled men in strength, power, speed, etc. I have been addressing the question of why women don’t play baseball, and opining that there is no reason for them not to play baseball.
You’ve systematically avoided addressing the actual question that this thread was about, in order to continue making a point that just about everyone in here had already conceded. Here it is for you again, in case you missed it: Yes, women are not as strong, as powerful, or as fast as men for the most part. Yes, if women played against men in baseball, men would win. But this doesn’t mean that women can’t play baseball.
What’s up, did they cancel your men’s synchronized swimming program in college?
Seriously, i don’t care if you like Title IX or not. Title IX really has nothing to do with the OP’s question.
Goal!