Baseball pitchers stand on a raised mound slanted towards home plate while softball pitchers are on flat ground with a white chalked circle known as the “pitching circle.”Īs for distance, baseball pitchers throw from 60 feet 6 inches, and softball players throw from 43 feet. “The underhand motion softball uses is considered a more natural motion than the overhand motion used in baseball,” Michael Krekes wrote in his article “Underhand motion in softball is better for arms” for The Natchez Democrat.Īside from the motion, both softball and baseball pitchers deliver from different distances and mounds. Throwing from a flat surface for multiple pitches and innings at a time has the potential to damage an athlete’s arm, so the delivery became underhand. It was created to allow athletes to play and practice through the different climates on any given day.ĭuring the 1970s, softball and baseball were said to be equivalent sports, but softball became a woman’s sport because schools that hosted softball teams had the right to deny women to play baseball while softball was available.īecause it started indoors, there was no mound for a softball pitcher to play off of. Softball became an organized in 1887 as an indoor sport. It is almost unheard of though, because pitching overarm or sidearm enables the pitcher to throw with a lot more power and speed.” SF State Gators’ Brent Montgomery (31) pitches against the Stanislaus State Warriors at SF State on Main San Francisco, Calif. We say ‘almost always’ because there is nothing in the rules stopping a baseball pitcher throwing underhand. Compared to softball, which has an underhand delivery, baseball’s overhand delivery is a trademark of the sport.Īccording to RulesOfSport, “In baseball, the pitch is almost always done overhand or sidearm. A key part of the game is pitching and delivery.Īlthough there is no official rule in baseball requiring a pitcher to deliver a ball overhand, pitchers go into a stretch mostly overhand and with different grips, with the goal of getting out of an inning by either a strikeout or fielding out. (Īlthough similar in concept, baseball and softball differ when it comes to one of the most important aspects of the game - pitching.īaseball became recognized as an official sport in the 1840s and since then has taken the athletic world by storm, becoming one of America’s favorite pastimes. Junior Lindsey Cassidy throws a pitch Feb.
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