We are all very familiar with the game ‘baseball’. Softball is a direct descendent of this game. It is a game, which is played mainly by women. Softball is a team game and it first took its birth in the United States. Unlike the name, softball does not have a soft ball, the ball used is as hard as the ball used in the game of baseball.

The main difference between the balls of the softball and baseball are that the soft ball are comparatively smaller in size than the baseball and also the pitches are thrown underhand in softball and overhand in baseball.

The governing body of the softball game is the “International Softball Federation”. The number of teams that can play a match are two, and the number of players playing per team will be nine to ten. Also the duration of a game is about one to two hours. The first game played was in the United States, in the year 1887.

The first game played was in the city of Chicago in the year 1887 between Yale and Harvard alumni. These two alumni’s came together at the “Farragut Boat Club” to hear the score of their annual football game. The scores were announced and bets fulfilled, at that moment one of the Yale alumni threw a glove and Harvard alumni hit the glove with a bat and one of them called out Play ball and the game began. For playing this game, the boxing glove was folded and fixed into a ball and the broom handle served as the bat. In this way the game of softball began. Moreover, from then on the game of softball spread wide and far to different countries and continents.

As told earlier, the game is played between two teams on a large field. This field is made of dust or brick dust and it is in the shape of a quadrilateral. When we compare the game of baseball and that of softball, we find out that the field used to play softball is much smaller than that of baseball.

The game is played usually in innings. At most, of the times, the game is played for seven innings, but in youth leagues, the game is played only for six innings. In an inning, both the teams will play once as a defense and once more as the offense.

At the end of the seventh inning, the team with the most number of runs wins. If the team batting second has leading runs then the last part of the seventh innings will not be played, the team will be announced as the winner. If both the team end up having the same score, then the game will go on continuing until a team wins. The matches are never let to be a draw.

All in all softball is one of the mo0st interesting games. It is a game that is still not yet practiced in many countries like India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh and so on. Nevertheless, we can be confident that this game will surely become famous one day, and all the countries will play it.

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Category: Sports
Keywords: softball, softball bat, softball bat material, bat grip, bat taper, aluminum softball bat, graphite