Is softball sexist?

Yeah, the game you guys are describing sounds awful.

Baseball, on a regulation field, sounds like it would be much more fun for everyone involved.

 

Baseball on a regulation field would leave the outfield as useless as it is in softball today. Few girls would have the strength to hit the ball there. A home run would be impossible.

I like micro's idea of softball on a bigger field.

 

I once batted against a Division I softball pitcher on the regulation softball field. She was dating my buddy, the third-string quarterback at Kent State, and I was running my mouth at a social gathering...telling her I would go yard off her. We met up the next day at the softball field and she threw me 20 pitches. I fouled off three of them and almost threw out my back when she threw a change-up. Would I want to try out for the softball team? No thanks. It looked like she was 10 feet from me and she could make that ball sing. I played baseball all my life and advanced to a pretty high level. I have faced upper 90's with movement. I could never get used to trying to hit a softball.

 

I also have to think major league hitters would adjust, but not just anybody could do it. I've hear similar stories to this many times. One of my former co-workers had been a pretty good college baseball player. He had played some slow-pitch and he wasn't far removed from his own playing days before he tried hitting off a local high school softball pitcher who was a college prospect. She made him look silly.

 

The swing and timing mechanisms are entirely different for a baseball swing and a fast-pitch softball swing. If one becomes second nature the other one is impossible.

 

That's really interesting, BP and OOP. Maybe that explains why guys in the major leagues tend to have such trouble with that rare guy who throws effectively from sidearm/lower (e.g., Darren O'Day or Chad Bradford). The visual cue/timing is so completely out of ordinary, it goes against years of mental programming.

 

In women's tennis Grand Slams the matches are 2 out of 3 sets. The men play 3 out of 5 sets so there is a difference.

 

I enjoy HS and college softball much more than baseball at that level. The game moves twice as fast. I guess the small-ball tactics don't bother me as much as some of you. High school baseball is brutal. Even HS baseball teams with "big-time" prospects are brutal for me to watch.

I enjoying covering HS softball as much as football or boys basketball. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that my coverage area is one of the best for softball in the state; we had three teams advance to state regionals. Area fans would go nuts if we had as many football or basketball teams go that far.

 

Agree that HS baseball is hard to watch. Softball was harder for me to watch because of all that damned chanting (I assume they still do that).

 

"Home run hitter up to bat/If you were you I'd scoot your booty back/scoot your booty back/all the way to San Francisco/where the people do the disco/uh uh uh uh/stayin' alive stayin' alive"

(call and response)
"My name is (insert name here) and you know what I got?"
"What do you got?"
"I got a team that's hotter than hot!"
"How hot is that?"
"Grand slams and home runs, too"
"Uh-huh, uh-huh"
"Let's see what (other teammate can do)!"
"My name is..."
(repeat ad infinitum)

"We want another one/just like the other one/we... want... another one/woo woo!" (there's a dance that goes with this -- it's after your pitcher throws a strike)

Sorry. My 8-year-old is on her fourth game in four days, so this is my version of trying to get rid of an earworm.

 

Yeah, they still do that. And it's still unnerving.

 

I'm lucky. The HS teams I cover are not big on the chants. I got a dose a couple of weeks ago while covering regional games when the eventual state champion beat two area teams (beat one in semifinal and one in final). They chanted non-stop. So I got it for two games. And for some reason they screamed the lyrics of Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourne at the top of their lungs. Whatever. Yeah, if I had to hear that during the rest of the season it would probably dampen my enthusiasm for the sport.