Softball

Softball is a team sport in which a ball, eleven to twelve inches in circumference, is thrown by a player called a pitcher and hit by an offensive player called a batter with a round, smooth stick called a bat. The ball itself is also called a softball.

Scoring is accomplished by the batter running and touching a series of four markers on the ground called bases. Softball is a direct descendant of baseball (sometimes referred to as hardball to differentiate the two), but differs from it in several ways. The chief four are:

• The ball is always pitched (thrown to the batter) underarm - that is, it is released when the hand is below the hip and no further from the body than the elbow; while in baseball the ball may be released in any position and is usually thrown overarm or sidearm.
• The ball is larger, less dense, and heavier than a baseball.
• The playing field is normally smaller.
• The game is seven innings long, as opposed to nine in baseball. Consequently, softball games typically take between sixty minutes and two hours to complete, as opposed to around three hours for most baseball games.

Softball is the most popular participant sport in the United States. An estimated 56 million Americans will play at least one game of softball during a year.

It is played by both genders socially as well as competitively, and was an Olympic sport for women beginning in 1996 until the IOC removed baseball and softball from their list of Olympic sports in 2005. The International Softball Federation holds world championships, held every four years, in several categories.