Okay, so the other day I was watching a softball game, and man, those pitches were flying! It got me thinking, how does softball pitching speed stack up against baseball? I mean, 67 mph in softball sounds pretty darn fast, but is it like, major league fast in baseball terms?
So, I did what any curious person would do – I dug into it. First, I grabbed a stopwatch and headed to the local park where some folks were playing softball. I wanted to get a feel for the timing of these pitches myself. I stood behind the catcher (with their permission, of course!) and timed a few pitches from the moment they left the pitcher’s hand to when they crossed the plate. It wasn’t super scientific, but it gave me a rough idea.
Then came the math part. I measured the distance from the pitcher’s mound to home plate in softball – it’s shorter than in baseball, 43 feet to be exact. I realized that the speed would depend on how long it takes for the ball to travel that distance, and so I took my stopwatch timings and started crunching some numbers.
After recording some speeds on my phone, I found the average time it took for a pitch to travel 43 feet, and then, I did a simple calculation: speed equals distance divided by time. And voilà, I had the speed in feet per second, which I then converted to miles per hour. After that I did some rough calculations, and found that, 67 mph in softball feels crazy fast because of the shorter distance, the reaction time is similar to a much faster pitch in baseball!.
Here’s what I scribbled down in my notebook:
- Softball Pitching Distance: 43 feet (that’s shorter than baseball’s 60.5 feet)
- Average Pitch Time: Recorded a few, and they were around 0.45 seconds.
- Calculations:
- Speed (ft/s) = Distance / Time
- So, 43 feet / 0.45 seconds ≈ 95.6 ft/s
- Then, convert to mph… which is roughly 65 mph (This is where 67 mph comes into play from the title)
But I didn’t stop there. I also found some information online that compared reaction times between softball and baseball. Apparently, a 75 mph pitch in softball gives a batter about the same reaction time as a 100 mph fastball in baseball. That’s wild, right? It means that even though the softball pitch might be slower in terms of pure speed, the shorter distance makes it just as challenging for the batter.
It’s pretty cool to see how these two sports compare. While the speeds might look different on paper, the intensity and skill involved in both are definitely on par. My little experiment really gave me a new appreciation for softball pitchers – those guys and gals are throwing some serious heat!
