history of softball essay

Softball was created in Chicago on Thanksgiving Day, 1887. A group of about twenty young men had gathered in the gymnasium of the Farragut Boat Club in order to hear the outcome of the Harvard-Yale football game. After Yale's victory was announced and bets were paid off, a man picked up a stray boxing glove and threw it at someone, who hit it with a pole. George Hancock, usually considered the inventor of softball, shouted, "Let's play ball!" He tied the boxing glove so that it resembled a ball, chalked out a diamond on the floor (smaller than a baseball diamond to fit the gym) and broke off a broom handle to be a bat. It was an odd, smaller version of baseball. That game is now, 111 years later, known as the first softball game. Softball may have seen its death on the day of its birth if Hancock had not been so fascinated by it. In one week, he created an oversized ball and an undersized rubber-tipped bat and went back to the gym to paint permanent white foul lines on the floor. After he wrote new rules and named the sport indoor baseball, a more organized, yet still new, game was played. It became very popular.



In order to reach the Olympics, the women's sport of softball had to grow greatly from its beginnings. The first women's softball team was formed in 1895 at Chicago's West Division High School. They did not have a coach for playing competitively until 1899 and it was difficult to create interest among fans. However, only five years later, softball got more attention. The Spalding Indoor Baseball Guide 1904 issue fueled this attention by devoting a large section of the guide to the game of women's softball. The first Olympic softball competition was at the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta. The United States won the gold medal, China won silver, and Australia won bronze at the 1996 Olympics.