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13

Jan, 2019

Which is harder?

Softball or Baseball?

Are male athletes superior to female athletes? Is baseball a harder sport than softball? How different are they really? Very different, not only in softball is the field smaller, the ball larger and pitching harder, it is also a lot harder to hit. You can make the argument that in baseball the ball is smaller which makes it harder to see and hit. But the bats have bigger barrels and a pitching mound is about 20 feet farther away from home plate, than in softball. As well as being farther away, the baseball mound is raised. This makes the ball travel in a downward trajectory, meaning that baseball players can not throw rise balls. In softball, the mound is flat; therefore pitchers can throw rise balls. This means that a softball batter has to work against gravity to hit a ball. Still not convinced that softball is a harder sport? In baseball, a fastball pitched at 90 miles per hour from an average pitching mound 55 feet from home plate gives a batter about .44 seconds to see and react to the pitch. In softball, a fastball pitched at 70 miles per hour from an average pitching mound of 37 feet, gives the batter about .35 seconds to see and react to the pitch. This means that a softball batter receiving a pitch 20 miles per hour slower still has 20% less time to react than a baseball player. Can you imagine if softball pitchers could pitch 90 miles per hour? The batter would have about .2 seconds to react, which is about the speed of blinking twice. So not only does a softball player have less time to react to the ball, if it is a rise ball or even just a high fast ball, they have to work against gravity, making softball a harder hitting sport than baseball.