Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Softball is a popular variation of baseball, the difference being that it is played with a larger ball, on a smaller field, and with only underhand pitches (where the ball is released while the hand is primarily below the ball) permitted. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level.
USA Softball publishes an updated rule book for softball each year which is widely used by adult and youth recreational leagues in the United States and abroad. The USA Softball rules were also used for the softball competition when it was an Olympic sport between 1996 and 2008. The most recent Olympics to feature softball, in 2021, used the ...
16-inch softball (sometimes called clincher, mushball, [1] cabbageball, [2] [3] puffball, blooperball, smushball, [4] and Chicago ball [5] [6]) is a variant of softball, but using a larger ball that gradually becomes softer the more the ball is hit, and played with no gloves or mitts on the fielders.
1980 was a year of division in professional softball as the Cleveland Stepien's Competitors, Fort Wayne Huggie Bears and Milwaukee broke away from the APSPL to form a new league (North American Softball League) in 1980, under the leadership of Cleveland owner Ted Stepien. [19] The Bourbons continued in the reduced numbers of the APSPL. [20]
George Warren Hancock (1 March 1861 – 15 April 1936), after the time a reporter for Chicago Board of Trade, invented the game of softball in 1887. The first game was played, inside the Farragut Boat Club in Chicago. [1] The first game of softball came from a football game between Yale and Harvard.
The 1969 Women's College World Series of softball was organized by the Omaha Softball Association and recognized by the Division for Girls' and Women's Sports (DGWS) as a championship tournament. Softball teams from nine colleges met on May 16–18 in Omaha and Fremont, Nebraska.
In 1981 the APSPL merged with NASL to create the United Professional Softball League (UPSL), but only the Milwaukee franchise came from the NASL to the new league as the other NASL teams folded. [ 17 ] [ 18 ] The merged league competed for two seasons, before disbanding after the 1982 season, ending the pro era of men's softball.
The World Cup of Softball was later established as one of the premier events for the sport of softball. At the second World Cup of Softball, the attendance record was broken and the television ratings were higher than in any previous US Softball event on ESPN and ESPN2. Fastpitch softball, however, was added to the 2020 Summer Olympics.