A few weeks ago I wrote an article about the Women’s College Softball World Series and I was asked by fellow writer Brian Joura if I thought that the pitching mound in softball should be moved back. This is a common question because in softball the pitching mound is closer than it is in baseball. Because of the close distance softball is a very pitching dominated sport. Anybody that tuned into the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament would have seen several shut-outs and even a lot of 1 – 0 scores. I’m not really sure why so many people ask this question because everything about the distance between the batter’s box and the pitching mound in softball is good. Women’s College Softball should not move the pitcher’s mound.
Any time that something new is being marketed it shouldn’t be exactly the same as another product. The XFL failed because it was the NFL with worse players. Arena Football has survived because it is different. Women’s College Softball is the same way. If anybody actually tried to push Women’s College Softball I think it would do way better than, say the WNBA because the fact that Women’s College Softball is such a pitching dominated sport makes it a lot different than Major League Baseball. Major League Baseball continues to have ballparks designed for hitters, there are conspiracies about juicing balls and they even turned away when they knew their players were using performance enhancing drugs. All of this has led to record numbers in hitting while pitching numbers are pretty pathetic. The pitching in Women’s College Softball is a breath of fresh air compared to Major League Baseball.
The distance between the batter’s box and the pitching mound in Women’s College Softball also makes home runs more important. There have been so many home runs hit in baseball in the 15 years in Major League Baseball that it no longer means anything. In most people’s eyes the career home run record, possibly the most cherished record in all of sports, has been tainted. In Women’s College Softball hitting double digits is good. Hitting 20 home runs is great. Home runs are still rare enough in Women’s College Softball that it actually means something.
When the WNBA first started their supporters said that the women’s game was better because it was more fundamentally sound. I’m not sure I believe that but it’s absolutely true in Women’s College Softball. In baseball there are a ton of players that just go to the plate and hack away. There aren’t many players like that in Women’s College Softball. The sport is so dominated by pitching that one run could win the game. This means that almost every softball team plays a run producing type of game. In softball there are better bunters, better base stealers and almost every batter learns to hit the ball in a specific location because it’s more important to move that runner over because that runner could win the game.
In Major League Baseball there are also many players that are pretty horrible defensively but play anyway because of their offensive ability. There aren’t many players like that in Women’s College Softball because again one run can win the game. Defense is a lot more important. There is also only 60 feet between bases instead of 90, meaning that Women’s College Softball players need to be even more alert defensively. With just 60 feet in between bases a ground ball can be a base hit if the defense doesn’t react fast enough and since most games are low scoring, they do.
One of the biggest complaints about Major League Baseball is that it’s too slow and boring. A few days ago the Detroit Tigers won a game 19 – 3. Nineteen runs is a lot, that sounds like it would be an interesting game but it wasn’t really. With that many runs and that many base runners can you imagine how many visits to the mound there were? Can you imagine how many times the Twins pitchers threw to first base to hold the runners on? Can you imagine how many pitching changes and stalling there was? Maybe the 15 minutes or so that it actually took the runs to score was exciting but the entire game was 2 hours and 53 minutes.
In Women’s College Softball they go by fast. So fast you’re surprised the game is over when it ends. Since Women’s College Softball is so pitching dominated there aren’t a lot of runners so there isn’t wasted time holding runners on. Most pitchers throw complete games so there isn’t a lot of pitching changes or stalling for a pitching change. The pitching duels in Women’s College Softball makes the game usually about 1 hour and 30 minutes tops, even a high scoring game like Arizona State’s 9 – 0 victory over Northwester was 2 hours tops and that’s televised games with commercials. Live games go even quicker than that.
Women’s College Softball should not change the distance between the batter’s box and the pitching mound. The only thing I would change is to perhaps have a limit of innings one pitcher can play in a week so that teams have to play multiple pitchers. Other than that there is nothing wrong with Women’s College Softball.
