HISTORY OF SOFTBALL

When we consider the history of softball, it’s easy to see how the game developed as the
younger sibling of baseball. What might not be quite so obvious is how three other sports
helped shape softball.

Boating, Boxing and Football, Oh My

Believe it or not, boating, boxing and football each played a role in the history of softball. A
boating club, a boxing glove and a football game were key ingredients in the very first game
of softball.
Young George Hancock was among a group of Harvard and Yale alumni who gathered at the
Farragut Boat Club in Chicago on Thanksgiving Day 1887. It was the Harvard-Yale football
game that drew them to the boating club. They waited anxiously for telegrams from the Polo
Grounds in New York, bringing updates on the game. Yale won the football game17-8. What
happened next is, so to speak, history.

As legend has it, a Yale man playfully threw a boxing glove at the Harvard grads. A quick
thinking Harvard fan deflected the glove with a stick—supposedly a broom handle. What
ensued was not the sports riot you might expect, but a raucous game of indoor baseball.
Hancock fashioned a large, soft ball by binding the boxing glove with its laces. He chalked out
a small baseball diamond inside the boat club and the game was underway. The hour-long,
action-packed game ended with a score of 41-40. Hancock decided the game was a keeper.
He wrote down rules and created a soft, over-sized ball and rubber-tipped bat that could be
used indoors. He also painted permanent foul lines on the floor of the Farragut Boat Club.

Rober’s game was called kitten ball in honor of his team’s name and contests between
different firehouses began to draw as many as 3,000 spectators. By 1913, the game had been
officially adopted by the Minneapolis Park Board and was played in parks and on playgrounds
throughout the city. The Park Board did change the name from kitten ball to diamond ball.

A Game by Any Other Name

From its beginnings in Chicago and Milwaukee, the popular ball game spread through the
upper Midwest and Canada. Depending on where you were, you might play cabbage ball,
mush ball or pumpkin ball. The size of the bat and ball and the exact rules varied as much as
the name. Men and women of all ages were active in the sport. In 1931, a team of men who
called themselves the Kids and Kubs traveled around the country playing softball. What made
them unique? They were all at least 75 years old and they played the game in suits.

Indoor-outdoor, diamond ball, or whatever you chose to call it, took on the moniker “softball”
in 1926 after a Denver YMCA official suggested the name. The newly christened sport made
a giant leap in 1933 when a Chicago reporter and sporting goods salesman organized a
softball tournament in conjunction with the world’s fair. Leo Fischer (the reporter) and Michael
Pauley (he would be the salesman) invited 55 teams to compete in three tournament divisions:
men’s fastpitch, men’s slowpitch and women’s. More than 350,000 spectators watched
tournament games at the ball field inside the world’s fair grounds. This tournament was the
catalyst for the spread of softball. Teams, leagues and tournaments began to spring up in
nearly every US town and in many parts of the world. During the next seven years, historians
estimate that more than five million people played softball.
Organizing the Game

The success of the tournament spurred the founding of the Amateur Softball Association in
the fall of 1933. The Association brought much-needed standardized rules to the game. The
ASA has always believed that softball is a game for all ages of participants, so it has set rules
for different age groups. A 12-inch ball is now the standard with many youth leagues using an
easier to handle 11-inch size. Some leagues play a variation of softball using a 16-inch ball.
The size of the field varies with age and between the fastpitch and slowpitch games. The
pitching rubber is anywhere from 35 to 50 feet from home plate and the distance between
bases ranges from 55 to 65 feet.

Local, regional and even national competition among men’s and co-ed slowpitch softball
teams is highly competitive but it is the fastpitch game that has caught fire internationally. The
windmill motion of a fastpitch softball pitcher can send the ball to the plate at speeds equal to
major league baseball pitchers.

Since 1951, the International Softball Federation has governed worldwide softball competition.
The first women’s fastpitch world championships were played in 1965 in Melbourne, Australia.
The host team won the five-team competition. The first men’s world championships were
played a year later in Mexico City. The US men’s team won the 1966 title. Since 1970, softball
world championship tournaments have been played every four years. Click here to see a list
of winners.

Basic Rules of Softball

The object of a softball game is to stand beside (not on) home plate and hit the ball into play.
There are two opposing teams, with the players in the filed of play called as the fielders. The
player hitting the ball is called the batter – who must run around the bases and return to the
home plate. If the ball is hit into the foul area then that is considered a strike, except when the
batter already has two strikes. If the ball is caught in the foul area, the batter is out. A ball is
foul when it lands in-field and then goes over the foul line before it reaches the out field, but a
ball is fair if goes over the foul line but has hit the ground in the out field. When three batters
have been caught/tagged/thrown/struck out, the whole team is out. Each batter who manages
to return to the home plate scores a point for the team. There should be around 6-9 innings to
wrap up a game, depending on how long the players want to play. The team with the most
number of runs wins the game.

Softball players position