{"id":19,"date":"2005-04-14T23:22:24","date_gmt":"2005-04-15T07:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/?p=19"},"modified":"2006-09-16T10:18:35","modified_gmt":"2006-09-16T18:18:35","slug":"softball-speeds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/softball-speeds\/","title":{"rendered":"unhittable pitch"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day, one of the dedicated softball dads brought out one of the big guns, radar guns. He fired it at our pitcher and at the opposing team’s pitcher.<\/p>\n

The pitches for both teams clocked in at 50 to 55 miles per hour. (Both pitchers seemed equally hittable: not very.)<\/p>\n

I asked how does this compare to other girl’s pitching speeds. The umpire said he had just seen a freshman girl at another school who pitched fast — more than 60 miles per hour.<\/p>\n

According to Slate<\/a>, Jennie Finch pitches a softball at 70 miles per hour or more.<\/p>\n

Somewhat surprisingly, for a baseball fan, a softball pitch is harder to hit than a baseball pitch. It comes down to physics, I guess and the differences between the two games.<\/p>\n

In fact, in the 2004 Olympics, the ace American team allowed only one<\/em> run in nine games. In softball, there are no great hitters, only great pitchers. The pitchers throw a bewildering variety of pitches from about 40 feet away.<\/p>\n

In baseball, the pitcher stands back 20 more feet, and can throw a fastball at 90 miles per hour. Sure, the softball pitcher throws a slower ball. But the softball pitcher’s repertoire is far more challenging than a baseball pitcher’s. Whether it’s a rise ball, drop balls, or curve, they’re all tough to hit.<\/p>\n

Recently, Jennie Finch has proven this by consistently striking out baseball hitters who’ve challenged her pitching abilities. But it’s not a new phenomenon: in 1967, a famous softball pitcher struck out Willie McCovey, Brooks Robinson, Willie Mays, Harmon Killebrew, and Roberto Clemente in an exhibition game.<\/p>\n

Interestingly the underhand pitch was the rule in early 1900’s baseball<\/a>. Back then — as in modern softball — the pitchers dominated the game. Nowadays, that underhand “softball style” pitch is illegal in baseball. And just maybe, the big-name baseball hitters are quite happy about that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day, one of the dedicated softball dads brought out one of the big guns, radar guns. He fired it at our pitcher and at the opposing team’s pitcher. The pitches for both teams clocked in at 50 to 55 miles per hour. (Both pitchers seemed equally hittable: not very.) I asked how does […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}