Why do girls play softball instead of baseball?

[SearchMaster]

When I played shortstop I was a little deeper in the infield and took a more traditional stance, (crouch with glove down on the dirt), but at third base my glove was in front of my chest.

Yes, and you're generally playing near the bag - 90 feet from the plate. Because a fast lefty batter in softball can go from home to first in under 2.5 seconds, you have virtually zero chance of getting them out if you stand near third base (60 feet from the plate). So a softball 3B must stand near the pitcher, say 30-40 feet from the plate, and leave the SS to cover the entire gap between 2B and 3B. Now if that speedy batter also has some power and manages to rip a line drive at the 3B who is standing really close...well she has about a quarter to a third of a second to protect her face or end up in the hospital with a concussion or broken face.

It's certainly similar to your example of men's fastpitch softball while standing further from the plate, but these ladies are basically trying to hit it right at/right past the 3B who is standing close to them and the men aren't generally trying to do that.

 

[Darwin333]

Yes, have you?

I've watched at the bare minimum 2,000 live games and I couldn't tell you how many televised games so yeah I've caught a few.

As the field is shrunk to accommodate women's physiology and weakness in throwing/running the ball has to be changed to slow it down to compensate for the smaller dimensions. If women played on a softball sized diamond with a baseball the corner infielders would have a life expectancy of 20 minutes. A softball is moving significantly slower than a baseball in all phases of the game and it most assuredly is slowed down compared to how fast a baseball travels when hit.

This is where you are wrong. The smaller field size means that your reaction time is virtually the same. At the end of the day reaction time is all that matters so no the game is not "slowed down". There are girls that throw the baseball equivalent, in reaction time, to 100mph pitches all day long AND they add a ton of movement to those same pitches. Ironically enough to your "slowed down" argument the record for fastest softball pitched is 75mph which is the baseball equivalent of 107.5MPH which is well below the baseball record.

The best major league hitters can and do easily adapt to hit softballs. It's a different swing required to successfully hit the different ball trajectory, so of course they're going to struggle to hit it if they see baseball pitching every day of their lives and then try to hit a softball once in a 20 second charity demo.

It's a much bigger ball which should make it easier to hit and you keep saying that the game is slowed down which combined with the above should make it very easy. Yet they can't even get a foul tip. The best of the best in baseball can't even put bat on ball, sure it's different but all of them complete whiffs in a slowed down easier game with a bigger ball, seriously?

 

[ElFenix]

I thought that the reason a baseball hitter often has difficulty in softball is because the pitcher is much closer, giving less time to read the pitch and hit the ball.

Basically the same reason that baseball hitters have trouble with a good fastball.

Whereas the softball hitters are quite used to the timing, since they deal with it normally.

it's mostly because the ball is coming from an angle that baseball players never see and moving in ways that baseball players never see. give a good hitter a season's worth of softball BP and they'll be slamming that thing out of the park.

 

[Ackmed]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs

Doesn't change the fact that they do. It's not an insult, just the facts. The fact is that women's softball takes a huge amount of skill. Another fact is they play it because they cannot compete with men in college/pros.

 

[glenn1]

Doesn't change the fact that they do. It's not an insult, just the facts. The fact is that women's softball takes a huge amount of skill. Another fact is they play it because they cannot compete with men in college/pros.

Both true. Women going up against men in sports generally get annihilated. The elite players have a roughly equivalent amount of athletic skill (Jennie Fitch is easily the quality equal of a Nolan Ryan or other HoF pitcher) but anatomical differences still play their trump card in the end. Maybe in an alternate universe our species would have the females being physically larger than males then we'd all enjoy watching womens' basketball and tease the men for not being able to dunk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Sexes_(tennis)