More Difficult: Softball or Baseball
- Thread starter agcy68
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I'm gonna go with baseball. Just based on the differences in distance from the mound, fences, bases, arm strength, swinging power, size of ball etc. Imagine if college or pro baseball players trained to play softball? Yikes.
Ball pace, travel, distances, and I feel like general variability (which related to ball speed and playing area size, too) are all higher in baseball than softball to me, so I'd go with baseball being generally more difficult to play.
Baseball, even the physical requirements are different. Just the difference in the physical impact on pitchers is probably enough to separate the two.
Maybe, but the ball gets to the middle infielders faster, and they don't have to throw as far to first base. And a big softball is easier to field, handle and throw.
I think baseball is significantly harder but don’t have enough experience with softball to make a fair judgment. I’ve umped both quite a bit but without playing it’s hard to say. Although I did go yard off our high school’s borderline all state softball pitcher when I was a junior and I was NOT a good hitter
Check out the myriad of YouTube videos documenting the humiliation of many baseball players' attempts to hit a fastpitch softball, and I think you'll find your answer.
Paging @harimad for input on this thread.
Paging @harimad for input on this thread.
Ok, take a softball player, and have them hit off of a top major league pitcher who throws a wicked cutter or a high 90's heater.
Once those baseball players got used to the rising action of the big yellow softball, they would be hitting pop flies 50 feet beyond the little league fences.
I always thought it'd be neat to see this the other way around. FWIW, I don't think this answers anything about difficulty. It's one sided/half-assed way to make softball seem tougher, the softball ladies wouldn't fair much better against men pitching either I'd guess. Things like this don't tell you much other than demonstrate how different the two sports are.
Agree, not sure what's convincing about seeing someone try to do something they've never done before.
When I was in around 8th or 9th grade, I tried to hit off what was considered a very good high school softball pitcher. It was very hard but mostly because the delivery was so much different that I couldn't get a feel. The ball didn't seem to be hard to hit but I don't think I was picking it up the same. FWIW, I was pretty decent at making contact. Wasn't a great hitter but made contact a lot.
I'd say baseball. If it weren't, you'd see women making their way to baseball, I think.
As for the video mentioned above, if you give those guys a week to see softball pitching, that video's going to look different.
I didn't play either in high school. But I played enough little league to know that I'm a ****** baseball player. My wife was an all-state softball pitcher in high school and would have pitched in college if not for back problems.
Just once for the hell of it I had her throw me a few pitches just to see if I could get a bat on one of them. I couldn't. Even as big as the damn softball is, the speed and movement of it coming from that close of a range make it irrelevant. It could have been the size of a beach ball and I wouldn't have managed much more than a foul tip. Conclusion: From a batting perspective they're both really, really difficult.
Just once for the hell of it I had her throw me a few pitches just to see if I could get a bat on one of them. I couldn't. Even as big as the damn softball is, the speed and movement of it coming from that close of a range make it irrelevant. It could have been the size of a beach ball and I wouldn't have managed much more than a foul tip. Conclusion: From a batting perspective they're both really, really difficult.