Baseball is derived from British Cricket Ball. With its fast pace, high speed and entertaining factors, baseball not only attracted enormous audiences, but became one of the most welcome sports in the world. But baseball requires special skills and fields which limited the availability of it to the general public. Softball hereby is developed to suit the majority.
The Softball
Softballs
(Photo by Mr. Chung Yang Wen)
Comparing to baseball, softball is more attractive to ordinary people. However, as many retired baseball players participated in softball aggressively, it became a kind of professional sport very soon, and was labeled as a formal item in many international contests. That makes softball not an easy sport for average people. Therefore, the slow pitch softball was invented, and the original softball was called fast pitch softball.
The Kickball
The kickball is common on campus. Of course it was originated from baseball. Players use their ankles to replace the bats, and the balls are replaced by footballs or volleyballs. The defending side players do not have to use professional gloves or mitts but catching balls by bare hands. Since it is very easy and not limited by places, the kickball is accepted by ordinary people. However, it is a quite new sport, so the definite rules to follow are not appeared yet.
The Tee Ball
Tee Ball
(Photo by Mr. Chung Yang Wen)
The Tee Ball is one of the major sport encouraged by the Department of Education. The equipment was made by foam rubber. And the ball was not pitched by the pitcher but set on a hitting holder. The Tee Ball cannot be hit to a far place or break any glass. In addition, people will not get hurt if hit by it. It is easy to play, and the places are not limited. So, people of every age and both sexes can play it.
Gender Limitation
Many people have the misconception of that baseball is played by men and softball is played by women. Even Olympic Games have only Men’s Baseball and Women’s Softball events. In fact, there is no gender limitation in either baseball or softball. There is not even any limitation for male and female players to play in the same game. We sometimes can see female players among the little league games. During WWII, there used to have a Women Baseball League in the US which gave some movie makers the idea of making the movie “Pink League”. Baseball is a sport that emphasizes speed and the strength of pitching and throwing balls, therefore is harder for women to compete with men. Softball, on the other hand, lack the speed and the excitement of baseball, is difficult to develop into professional sports events.
