IV.

History

In 1887 softball was invented as an indoor sport by George Hancock, a reporter for the Chicago Board of Trade. The first games took place inside the Farragut Boat Club in Chicago. In 1895 Lewis Rober, a member of the Minneapolis, Minnesota, fire department, invented outdoor softball and called it Kitten League Ball, later shortened to Kitten Ball. Rober invented the game to keep the firemen in shape and busy during the time they spent at the firehouse. In subsequent years the popularity of Kitten Ball spread throughout the United States. In 1922 the name Kitten Ball was changed to Diamond Ball. The name softball was not developed until 1926, when Walter Hakanson of the Denver, Colorado, Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) conceived of it while attending a meeting in Greeley, Colorado, to form the Colorado Amateur Softball Association. In 1933 the first national amateur softball tournament in the United States took place in Chicago in conjunction with that year's World's Fair (see Exhibitions and Expositions: Century of Progress International Exposition). The softball tournament was staged by two American sports enthusiasts, Leo Fischer and Michael J. Pauley, and soon after the Amateur Softball Association was formed.

Softball's popularity continued to grow and to spread internationally. By the mid-1990s it was played in more than 85 countries under the auspices of the International Softball Federation (ISF), the international governing body of the sport. The ISF was founded in 1952. The first ISF Women's World Championship was held in 1965 in Melbourne, Australia, and the first ISF Men's World Championship was held in 1966 in Mexico City, Mexico. Both were played in the fast-pitch classification. World championships for boys' and girls' fast-pitch softball were first played in 1981.

Softball has become increasingly popular among women, particularly at the youth and collegiate levels. More than 600 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) member institutions sponsor women's softball programs, and national championships for women are held in all three NCAA sports divisions (divisions I, II, and III). Women's fast-pitch softball debuted as a medal sport at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2005 the International Olympic Committee voted to drop softball—and baseball—from the 2012 Olympic Games.

Reviewed by: National Softball Association