SOFTBALL HISTORY

Thumbnail history of game
Game of softball born of
boxing glove & yacht club

The first game of what would become "softball" was played 127 years ago on Thanksgiving Day 1887. It actually was a hastily configured baseball game, which pitted Yale versus Harvard inside Chicago's Farragut Boat Club. The ball was a tied boxing glove with a broom handle for a bat. There were no gloves, but alumni George Hancock did write down that day's rules for posterity.

     After 1889, the game was played indoors and outdoors with 

     a ball the size of a small medicine ball with a bat two inches 

     thick. By the 1930's, rules standardized the game to appear 

     more like what's played today.

In 1889 the game moved outdoors. Minneapolis fireman Lewis Rober marked up the first field and set seven innings as the game's official contest. By this time, the ball had become a small medicine ball with a bat two inches thick.

The games – known variously as cabbage ball, mush ball, kitten ball, pumpkin ball, diamond ball, etc. --began to draw as many as 3,000 fans. 

In 1926, the Denver YMCA dubbed the sport “softball” for the first time. The name caught on.

The first travel team formed in 1931. It was a squad entirely of men, 75 years-of-age and older, taking the field in business suits, who called themselves Kids and Kubs.

Newspaper reporter Leo Fischer and sporting goods salesman Michael Pauley brought the game to the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, where 55 teams participated before 350,000 fans who watched different games of men's and women's slow and fastpitch. Softball had arrived. The ASA – Amateur Softball Association – was founded that fall.

CLICK HERE for the full story at ASA/ USA Softball
CLICK HERE for the full story at softballperformance.com