In 1991, women’s fast pitch softball was added to the roster of the 1996 Summer Olympics-a landmark many people recognize as the ultimate success of a sport. While the sport was originally advertised as an indoor game for baseball players looking to maintain their dexterity during the off season, it gained so much popularity and recognition that it quickly became its own official sport. Games using these 16-inch balls are often referred to as “cabbage ball,” “super slow pitch,” and “mush ball,” and unlike competitive softball, players are not allowed to wear fielding gloves. However, many Chicagoans still hold fast to the belief that real softball is played using a 16-inch ball. Rober’s ball won out as the preferred softball size, and professional softball games today are played using a 10–12-inch ball. However, Lewis Rober Sr., the man responsible for organizing softball games for firefighters in Minneapolis, used a 12-inch ball. The original softball used by the Farragut Boat Club was 16 inches in circumference. Up until this point, the game was being played with varied rules, player positions, and ball sizes. In 1934, the Joint Rules Committee on Softball collaborated to create a set of standardized rules. As the history of softball shaped itself over the next decade, the game went under the guise of “indoor baseball,” “kitten baseball,” “diamond ball,” “mush ball,” and “pumpkin ball.” In 1926, Walter Hakanson coined the term “softball” while representing the YMCA at a National Recreation Congress meeting, and by 1930, the term stuck as the sport’s official name. George Hancock, a reporter for the Chicago Board of Trade, jokingly called out, “Play ball!” and the first softball game commenced with the football fans using the boxing glove as a ball and a broom handle in place of a bat.ĭue to the initial excitement surrounding the game, the Farragut Boat Club decided to officially devise their own set of rules, and the game quickly leaked to outsiders in Chicago and, eventually, throughout the rest of the Midwestern U.S.
The Harvard fan swung at the balled-up glove with a stick, and the rest of the group looked on with interest. When Yale was announced as winner, a Yale alumnus playfully threw a boxing glove at a Harvard supporter. The history of softball dates back to Thanksgiving Day of 1887, when several alumni sat in the Chicago, Illinois Farragut Boat Club, anxiously awaiting the outcome of the Yale versus Harvard football game. Although many people assume that softball was derived from baseball, the sport’s first game actually came about because of a football game.
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