Why do girls play softball instead of baseball?

[nexus5rocks]

Watching college world series on ESPN, these girls can hit farther, throw faster, field better (but probably not run faster) than me.

Why can't they play baseball instead? Is the pitching motion too much for their rotator cuffs? The baseball too hard?

 

[brianmanahan]

i never understood either

my cousin played catch w/ a regular baseball with me until she was 8

then she started playing softball and didn't like baseball anymore

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Funny I said something similar last week.
Personally I think the bigger ball us easier to hit for some and that some makes the difference

 

[Zodiark1593]

I wondered this myself as well. Even assuming weaker ligaments, the reduced muscle power should allow them to achieve similar endurance compared to a Male's ligaments with scaled up muscle power.

Unless the strength of the female ligaments are weak enough that even their lesser muscle power can wear them down in short order.

 

[brianmanahan]

Funny I said something similar last week.
Personally I think the bigger ball us easier to hit for some and that some makes the difference

but the pitcher's mound is much much closer in softball, giving less reaction time

in my state, i've seen quite a few HS softball girls who made it to state championship playoffs having thrown no-hitters and perfect games in MOST of their regular season games. it is far more rare in boy's HS baseball.

that makes it seem like softball pitchers have way too much of an advantage.

 

[Newbian]

Because it's what girls play and boys play baseball.

They are forced into one early and and usually stick to what's familiar.

 

[lxskllr]

Girls prefer big balls

 

[sactoking]

Because baseball is no fun as it has no synchronized chanting from the bench.

 

[zerocool84]

Girls prefer big balls

Chick's dig the long ball

 

[Crono]

The pitching is typically less based around fastballs and average pitching speed is slower for women.

Not that there aren't women who can throw fastballs, but physiologically speaking men (especially professional players) are going to have much larger arms than their female counterparts. Googling says fastest female pitchers are 10% slower than male pitchers of the same caliber. Which isn't enough of a difference to mean women couldn't just play baseball, but I guess culturally at some point the indoor version of baseball seemed better suited for women.

 

[Linux23]

Girls prefer big balls

or they prefer softer balls. get it.

 

[pete6032]

but the pitcher's mound is much much closer in softball, giving less reaction time

in my state, i've seen quite a few HS softball girls who made it to state championship playoffs having thrown no-hitters and perfect games in MOST of their regular season games. it is far more rare in boy's HS baseball.

that makes it seem like softball pitchers have way too much of an advantage.

In baseball the mound is raised and thus pitches are always thrown in a downward direction from the top of the pitcher's arm release into the catcher's glove. In softball the mound is not raised and the pitch is thrown level or from low to high, making it much more difficult to hit.

 

[Darwin333]

Funny I said something similar last week.
Personally I think the bigger ball us easier to hit for some and that some makes the difference

Not really, the bigger ball allows for a hellofa lot more spin and more ball movement. Combined with the mound being closer to the plate and on ground level it's not nearly as easy as you think. There is even a riseball pitch in which the ball literally rises after you have already started to swing.

Not the best angle but look at the amount of movement on those pitches, it's insane.

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

 

[Anubis]

woman played BB in WW2 and ive often wondered why softball became a thing

also why does woman's lacrosse have different rules vs mens? Lacrosse and soft ball are the only 2 that i can think of that are different

 

[Darwin333]

In baseball the mound is raised and thus pitches are always thrown in a downward direction from the top of the pitcher's arm release into the catcher's glove. In softball the mound is not raised and the pitch is thrown level or from low to high, making it much more difficult to hit.

It's not that the ball is thrown low to high it is the spin that is put on the ball that makes it go right, left, down, up or a combination. The release point is at their waste which is already in the strike zone.

My daughter is the starting pitcher for a back to back World Series softball travel team. They have a bunch of different leagues so there are a bunch of different World Series but we are in a damn competitive one.

Fastballs are just too easy for the girls to eventually catch up with and while a lot of college teams will keep a good fastball pitcher to switch in and out for when the opponent gets used to a certain pitcher, "breaking ball" pitchers can move the ball around like crazy and have been hands down the best softball pitchers of all time.

 

[Darwin333]

woman played BB in WW2 and ive often wondered why softball became a thing

also why does woman's lacrosse have different rules vs mens? Lacrosse and soft ball are the only 2 that i can think of that are different

It really is a very different game. I didn't think it was either until my daughter started playing travel ball but the differences are huge.

 

[NoTine42]

A fun read:
Why MLB hitters can't hit Jennie Finch and science behind reaction time
http://www.si.com/more-sports/2013/07/24/sports-gene-excerpt

Softball star Finch pitching to MLB stars:

Finch rocked and fired. Pujols missed badly. He turned and walked away, toward his tittering teammates. Then he stopped, bewildered. He turned back to Finch, doffed his cap and continued on his way.

"I never want to experience that again," he later said.
........Bonds watched dozens of strikes go by without so much as swinging. Not until Finch began to tell Bonds what pitches were coming did he tap a meek foul ball a few feet. He taunted her, "Go on, throw the cheese!" She did, and blew it right past him

 

[Mai72]

The pitching is typically less based around fastballs and average pitching speed is slower for women.

Not that there aren't women who can throw fastballs, but physiologically speaking men (especially professional players) are going to have much larger arms than their female counterparts. Googling says fastest female pitchers are 10% slower than male pitchers of the same caliber. Which isn't enough of a difference to mean women couldn't just play baseball, but I guess culturally at some point the indoor version of baseball seemed better suited for women.

But, but but my liberal teacher says women can do everything a man can do!

Sounds sexist.

 

[Elixer]

The pitching is typically less based around fastballs and average pitching speed is slower for women.

Not that there aren't women who can throw fastballs, but physiologically speaking men (especially professional players) are going to have much larger arms than their female counterparts. Googling says fastest female pitchers are 10% slower than male pitchers of the same caliber. Which isn't enough of a difference to mean women couldn't just play baseball, but I guess culturally at some point the indoor version of baseball seemed better suited for women.

Is that 10% with or without performance enhancing drugs?

 

[Ackmed]

Because women cannot compete at the same level as males all things equal in sports.

Girls prefer big balls

Yet in basketball they use a smaller one...

 

[SearchMaster]

The skills required in baseball are a restriction to most females. Most will never be able to throw overhand at more than 80MPH, or throw it 300+ feet from outfield to home. The smaller field in softball along with the whirlibird pitching makes it more suitable for the naturally weaker sex.

Now, I am not in ANY way saying softball is easy - it absolutely is not, and as posted above most highly skilled baseball players have extreme difficulty hitting against highly skilled softball pitchers. Plus the short base paths and smaller field overall make it an incredibly fast game. It absolutely amazes me that the 3B in softball can play 30 feet from the plate and pick up a sharply hit ball quickly enough to make the throw to first.

My sons have been playing baseball for well over 10 years now, and I've seen some fantastic female players over the years. But as they get closer to puberty and adolescence, the athletic advantage that many of these young ladies have over their male counterparts diminishes. I was at a 12U game a few years back and commented to my wife that the best player on the field was the young lady in center field. The guy next to me said, "yeah she already threw 5 innings of no-hit ball and hit a HR and triple."

 

[SearchMaster]

but the pitcher's mound is much much closer in softball, giving less reaction time

in my state, i've seen quite a few HS softball girls who made it to state championship playoffs having thrown no-hitters and perfect games in MOST of their regular season games. it is far more rare in boy's HS baseball.

that makes it seem like softball pitchers have way too much of an advantage.

That's the one thing that I like better about baseball than softball. In softball you can have one shutdown pitcher and win a championship because many of them can pitch every inning of a 3 game stand. In baseball, it takes several great pitching performances from multiple players to win championships, and I think that makes it a little more special.

I do love this time of year though, some of those college softball pitchers have A+ booties and the camera angles really accentuate it

My niece is going to LSU in fall of 2018 on a full ride softball scholarship, and I'm really looking forward to watching that team as often as I can.

 

[Darwin333]

But, but but my liberal teacher says women can do everything a man can do!

Sounds sexist.

I'd bet a paycheck that the best HS baseball boys in the state couldn't hit off of my Freshman (doing to be a Sophomore) daughter.

LSU has a charity softball game every year (or at least used to), girls softball team against the boys baseball team and both teams are always high ranked/very good teams. The girls even give the boys a pitcher to make it fair. The last game I went to, which was a while ago, the boys started trying to bunt EVERY pitch and EVERY batter because they flat couldn't hit off the girl pitchers throwing those "slow" balls.

I'm not ashamed to say that unless my daughter tells me she is throwing a down the middle fastball I can't hit off her either. Her dropball is like rolling a ball off a friggen table, one minute it's smack dead in the middle of the strike zone and the next it dives for the dirt. She is still working on her riseball but it's gotten much better. When she is "on" she can pretty much ensure that a batter can only foul it off or pop it up for an easy catch. That's playing against other girls, again boys don't stand a chance at even fouling it off because they are used to balls being thrown down and never ever see balls going up. Once she can start placing that riseball anywhere she wants it will be deadly. You can see plenty of youtube videos of batters being forced to chase balls all over the place just to try and foul it off after they swung at what they thought was a strike.

 

[Darwin333]

My niece is going to LSU in fall of 2018 on a full ride softball scholarship, and I'm really looking forward to watching that team as often as I can.

Congrats to your niece! LSU has an awesome softball program and a great coach. We attend pitching and sometime batting (although my daughter bats less and less now she still loves it) camps with LSU players and coaching staff at least three times a year. Your niece will love the school.

What position does she play if you don't mind me asking? Softball gets the short end of the stick when it comes to scholarships so they have very few to give out and I'm just curious of what positions they are filling with them.

 

[SearchMaster]

She's an outfielder with amazing speed.