History of Softball

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The History of Softball This beloved sport that most believe came from America's pastime Baseball, surprisingly is based off of football. In 1887 on Thanksgiving day, several alumni sat in the Chicago, Illinois Farragut Boat Club, anxiously awaiting the outcome of the Yale vs Harvard football game. When Yale was announced as winner, a Yale alumnus playfully threw a boxing glove at a Harvard supporter. The Harvard fan swung at the balled-up glove with a stick, and the rest of the group looked on with interest. 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. 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. As the sport grew more and more, so did all of the nicknames like “indoor baseball,” “kitten baseball,” “diamond ball,” “mush ball,” and “pumpkin ball.” In 1926, Walter Hakanson was at an interview and the title “softball” came out and the name stuck ever since that day in 1930. In 1934, the Joint Rules Committee on Softball collaborated to create a set of standardized rules. The original softball used by the Farragut Boat Club was 16 inches in circumference. However, Lewis Rober Sr., the man responsible for organizing softball games for firefighters in Minneapolis, used a 12-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. 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. In 1991,

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