Image: Wikimedia Commons

softball

Sport in which teams compete to score runs by hitting a thrown ball and advancing around bases

Instance of: type of sport
, hobby
, sport
2
Sources
1.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/softball
2.Stated in The Britannica Dictionarybritannica.com/dictionary/softball
View statement on Wikidata ↗
+1 more
Subclass of: ball game
, team sport

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Softball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams on a diamond-shaped field, who take turns batting and fielding. There are two primary forms: Fast-pitch and slow-pitch. In both forms, the pitcher throws the ball underhand to batters. In fast-pitch, the ball is typically thrown with a "windmill" motion and releasing the ball at hip level. Pitchers throw balls up to 77 miles per hour (124 km/h). Fast-pitch is played at the high school, collegiate, and professional levels. Women's fast-pitch softball was introduced to the Summer Olympic Games in 1996. Softball was not included in the 2024 Summer Olympics but will return for the 2028 Summer Olympics. Slow-pitch softball is commonly played in recreational leagues, with the ball being pitched at slow speeds and slightly simplified rules, making it an accessible sport for people of many ages.

Overview

All data

69 statements · 20% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Sport: baseball
Uses: softball
Practiced by: softball player
Unicode character: 🥎
OpenStreetMap tag: baseball=softball
sport=softball
Country of origin: United States

On other databases

53 identifiers linking softball across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

20%

externally sourced

Source last edited September 19, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). softball (Q171038). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/softball-Q171038