Softball: Two form, one just as dumb as the other

The Game Room
1

I just don’t understand organized softball. There seems to be two forms. Both heavily weighted against the batter.

One, (Fast pitch) the pitcher practically stands on top of the batter and under hands the ball as fast as he can towards the catcher. Because the pitcher is so close and the ball is thrown so fast, the batter can barely get around on the ball. What’s the point?

Two, (Slow pitch) the pitch throws the ball in a big rainbow towards the plate. The ball is coming almost straight down by the time the batter is supposed to hit the ball. Again, what’s the point?

Is any one having fun here? Heaven forbid the batter actually has a chance to hit the ball and the fielders have to make a play.

I know that occasionally a batter does get around on the ball and there is some action on the field, but compared to organized baseball, there is very little going on.

You want to throw hard? Stand back a little! God forbid the teams actually score a few more runs and make for an exciting game! Have some fun for Christ’s sake!

When my friends and I play, we actually allow the “at plate” team to use one of their players to pitch to them. After 9 inning the score is often 28 to 26, which is not a “normal” softball score, but we sure had a great time!

2

Slow pitch is heavily weighted against the hitter? What are your views on tee-ball?

3

Average pitch speed by age group. (fFastpitch)

College pitching distance is 43 feet. Appx. pitch travel time is about the same as in MLB.

4

Yes, how is a batter supposed to hit a ball coming almost straight down out of the sky?

And further WHY should a batter have to hit a ball that is dropping out of the sky at a ridiculous angle?

How about if the ball crosses the plate instead of almost bouncing on it?

5

Exactly my point. How many college players are skilled enough to hit MLB speed pitches? Pretty close to zero. BACK UP A LITTLE! Let’s have some fun out here.

6

Or maybe learn to play. Hitting a slow-pitched softball ain’t exactly the hardest feat in sports. Pretty much anybody with decent coordination can handle it.

7

Put it this way: if most players of either form of softball felt that the rules for pitching were severely weighted towards the pitcher, the rules would have been changed by now.

8

I can answer this question. No, nobody is having fun, because softball the game, played under the rules you’re familiar with…doesn’t exist! That’s right, you’ll never be able to find anyone playing the game, because obviously nobody would play a game whose rules don’t allow any fun. You’ve maybe seen video clips, or rules manuals, describing a game called softball, but that’s all special effects, and hocus pocus, it’s a big sham – it isn’t actually played anywhere, anytime, by anybody in the universe. Puzzle solved!

9

1 - Level swing, keep that back elbow up.

2 - Wait. Seriously, I mean it, wait. Even longer. Now count to 3. Now you can swing.

Until you get the timing down you will pop up everything into a nice easy fly ball that looks impressive at first, until it lands in the outfielders mitt for an easy out.

10

I play softball (mens and coed) 8 months a year. We regularly see games in the high 20s to 30s.

11

I honestly cannot understand if you’re joking or not, because there’s no way you can be serious.

First of all, the idea that it’s impossible to hit is positively absurd. In my slo-pitch league the average runs scored per game per team is just under 14 (the average score is 16-11, actually) which is about three times higher than a typical baseball game; the absolute worst hitting team in the league scored almost ten runs per game. The average on base percentage is just over .500, so in fact batters succeed more often than they fail. This is a recreational league for men over 35, I should point out, not an elite league that sends teams to the provincials and stuff. When I played low level co-ed the on base percentages for men was still over .500 and for women averaged around .400 (but with a lot of variance.)

In fact, just to make it so the hitters don’t have it too easy, all leagues I have been in count a foul ball as a third strike. It’s the only way to keep hitting to reasonable levels.

Secondly, if you would bother to actually attend a slo-pitch game you will quickly see that the ball is NOT coming straight down when it approaches the plate; it’s coming in at a distinctly sideways angle, typically about 45 degrees. Pitching in slo-pitch is much harder than it looks, and the less skilled the pitcher the less vertical drop the pitch will have, since only the most skilled of pitchers can be drops in excess of 45 degrees. Furthermore, any reasonably well organized league has limits on how high the pitch can be delivered, thus limiting the possible angle of the incoming ball.

This is technically called “three-pitch” and is a perfectly acceptable form of softball if you don’t have umpires and your level of skill is very low. For reasonably skilled players it’s not suitable because it wouldn’t be 28-26, it’d be 77-64. Just throw me flat meatball pitches and I’ll bat .800 and hit a home run every fourth at bat, and I’m an average hitter at best. Slo or fast pitch prevents scores from getting out of hand. If we found it was suddenly impossible to hit we’d change the rules.

You also have to bear in mind that in skilled, organized leagues, an average score of 16-11 is about as high as you want to go because you have time limits. On game nights we need to get most of our games finished in 90 minutes so the next game can commence. You can’t simply play forever, and if the scores were much higher, you’d hardly ever be able to play more than three or four innings a game, which would suck.

12

I count to 4, actually, and have a little routine I go through in batting practice;

One, see the pitch.
Two, decide.
Three, more my legs.
Four, swing.

It’s a good way to practice moving your lower half first, and of course waiting. Waiting is everything.

13

I take it you’ve never gone to the park and hit a ball you’ve lobbed yourself? Remember? One hand on the bat, the other one tosses the ball?

Guess what?! The ball is, literally, coming straight down, and if you have even half of a single bit of skill, you can crush the ball all day long.

There isn’t enough scorn and ridicule for the OP.

14

I’m pretty sure that’s a standard in most leagues. I’ve never known one that doesn’t play that way. We even played that way in phys ed. (We also used a 3-2 count to keep things moving, rather than the standard 4-3 count.)

15

When I first started playing softball (having spent decades as a non-athlete), I would start my swing at what seemed like a reasonable moment, only to find that I was tensing up and actually slowing my bat down in order to actually hit the ball. After a while, I learned to do two things. Loosen my grip on the bat a bit (so that I wouldn’t try to “muscle” my bat onto the ball) but, more importantly, wait until what seemed like the last possible minute to swing. This forced me to increase my bat speed, and as a result I actually started to get hits.

So, yeah, wait a looooooonnngggg time to start your swing. And then wait just a tad more.

16

Is the OP in the USA? If so, keep your eyes open for the Women’s College World Series next summer. One of my favorite things in all of sport.

17

I don’t know, but when I played in rec league softball, I had a batting average well above .500 (and usually in the .650s) so…easily?

Seriously, you cannot ever have actually played or watched someone play serious slow-pitch softball if you think the pitchers dominate the game.

If I wanted to play baseball, I’d play baseball.

18

I love point #2 here, but Ted Williams and I disagree with you on point #1. Well, Ted was talking about baseball, but you can apply it to slow pitch softball. You need at least a slight uppercut if you want to hit for any kind of power.

As for fast pitch, the timing is not so different from baseball when you consider the speed/distance.

19

Well, that post was written by someone with warning track power (me). My goal is to always hit line drives, in which case the back elbow up is good, but you’re right, that doesn’t apply to everyone.

20

Current slo-pitch and retired fast-pitch player chiming in.

I can agree with some of what you say, but a lotta holes in your thinking, also.

As for fast pitch – which is pretty much reserved for high-skill, serious-competition play – over time, you develop a timing for fast pitch for almost any pitcher. In most of our regional tournaments (Vegas, Palm Springs, Santa Barbara), by the last day of the tournament, most players would be pretty much hitting be the crap out of the ball.

That said, there are some pitchers that are just too good and throw too hard for the distance to the plate. We had this guy who pitched on the Argentinian national team and our local league games got boring to the point that I and the other outfielders would do stuff like close our eyes during pitches and not open them until we heard contact and then have to find the ball (or spin around circles before the pitch, etc.). But these were extreme cases. It seems that women’s collegiate ball had this issue a while back where the scores resembled World Cup Soccer games and they moved the pitching rubber back, I believe, to allow for more hitting. And still it persists. But, still, it makes strategy (e.g. bunting, stealing, etc.) a greater factor and compelling in that way.

Regarding slo pitch, no pitcher is unhittable, even in unlimited arc (as opposed to 12- or 16-foot limit pitch), but again, the better pitchers are usually in leagues with better hitters. Most games have scores in the teens on most levels and if you’ve put fewer than 10 runs on the board you, as a team, feel like you’ve failed.

However, unlimited arc slo-pitch is a bore to me at times and I hate hitting it. But I’ve yet to face someone who could hit the deep part of the plate with such accuracy and consistency that he was unhittable. But I haven’t played tournament slo-pitch, so I would guess they do exist on some level.