Ever wonder how this sport got started? I did...
"Let's Play Ball"-
Thanksgiving Day, 1887, Chicago Illinois.
On Thanksgiving Day in 1887, Yale's football team claimed victory over Harvard. Of the many interested were those young men awaiting the outcome at the Farragut Boat Club in Chicago. Once the Yale's victory was announced and all bets were paid off, one of the young men happened to pick up a stray boxing glove, throwing it at another young man who hit it with a pole.
Paying close attention to what may have otherwise been considered an insignificant event, George Hancock shouted, "Let's Play Ball!". Hancock tied up the glove so that it resembled a ball, chalked out a diamond shape on the gym floor, and broke off a broom handle to serve as a bat. What followed was an odd, small version of what became known as indoor-baseball...Now, over 100 years later that game is known historically as the first softball game.
Enthusiam Abounds-
Had George Hancock not been an enthusiast, the game may have died the day of it's birth. As it was, within a week, Hancock created an oversized ball and an undersized rubber-tipped bat, went back to the gym to paint permanent white foul lines on the floor, wrote the 1st set of rules, and gave this awesome game the name: "Indoor Baseball". Popularity was immediate!
Hancock's original game of indoor baseball quickly caught on in popularity, becoming international with the formation of a league in Toronto, Canada. 1897 was also the year of the premiere publication of the Indoor Baseball Guide. This was the first nationally distributed publication on the new game and it lasted a decade. In the spring of 1888, Hancock's game moved outdoors. It was played on a small diamond and called indoor-outdoor. Due to the sport's mass appeal, Hancock published his first set of indoor-outdoor rules in 1889.
Times, they are a changin! - 1895.
Probably completely unfamiliar with Hancock's version of this game, Lewis Rober, Sr. made critical modifications to the game we know as softball. Rober, a Minneapolis, Minnesota fire department officer, looking for an activity to keep his men occupied and in shape during their free time, took his men to a lot next door to the firehouse to "play ball". His game, which was created to fit the confines of this vacant lot, was instantly appealing. 1 year later, in 1896, Rober was moved to a new unit with a new team to manage. In honor of his groups name, the kittens, the game was, for a short while, termed Kitten League Ball, later shortened to Kitten Ball.
Women- Say Hey!
The first women's softball team was formed in 1895 at Chicago's West Division High School. They did not obtain a coach for competitive play until 1899 and it was difficult to create interest among fans. However, only five years later, the women's game was given much more attention when the Spalding Indoor Baseball Guide 1904 issue fueled the fire by devoting a large section of the guide to the game of women's softball.
The Chicago National Tournament of 1933 helped advance women in this sport by honoring males and females ... equally. International Softball World Championships in 1965 developed women's softball by making it an international game, a step towards the Pan-American Games and the Olympics. Eleven years later, women softball players were given the closest equivalent to Major League Baseball with the 1976 formation of the International Women's Professional Softball League. Unfortunately the league disbanded in 1980 because of financial ruin.
Since the professional league's end in 1980, the popularity of softball has grown steadily with no end in sight.