How did college softball become a hitter's game?

New York Times

21-05-2025

When she goes to baseball games, Virginia Tech's Cori McMillan sometimes has no idea what's going on.
That's not because McMillan, an outfielder for the Hokies and this season's home run leader (31) in Division I softball, doesn't know the rules of baseball. It's because the white ball is much harder to see when hit into the clouds. When a bat makes contact and launches the ball skyward, she frequently loses sight of it.
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She laughed, recalling this, the absurdity of one of the best softball players in the country getting momentarily confused while watching her brother's sport. But can you blame her?
The ball that McMillan plays with is hard to miss — a highlighter colored ball, offset with raised red seams that is so bright, it's easy for batters to see and make contact. The yellow ball has made softball a hitters' sport, with players throughout the lineup regularly smashing home runs.
In short, the ball's design accomplishes exactly what it is supposed to do.
The women's college World Series starts May 29, with Oklahoma going for its fifth consecutive title. In the last few years, softball has exploded in popularity, often drawing better ratings than the men's College World Series. In 2021, the WCWC outdrew the MCWS by nearly 60 percent (1.2 million average viewers to 775,000), and in 2022, it set a viewership record in the championship series with an average of 1.7 million viewers during Game 2. It again outdrew the MCWS final. Last year, Game 1 of the WCWS championship series reached 1.9 million viewers with a peak of 2.1 million.
Part of that can be attributed to softball's fast pace, games usually don't take more than two hours. Additionally, dominant players typically play for four full seasons, allowing fans to follow their careers, unlike in baseball, where the best underclassmen leave for the pros.
But according to people inside and around the game, there is another reason for increased fan engagement — the abundance of offense.
Consider this: In the first round of the NCAA Tournament, 64 teams combined for 1,542 total hits, including 236 home runs, 14 grand slams and eight walk-off hits.
And the offensive explosion wasn't limited to the top of the lineup; some of the biggest hits came from batters slotted in the bottom three spots in the order.
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That was the case in the tournament's biggest shocker so far: Trailing top-seeded Texas A&M 3-1 in the top of the sixth on the Aggies' home field, Liberty's No. 8 hitter, Savannah Jessee, slammed a two-run homer to left center, evening the score and setting up the Flames to eliminate TAMU.
In the regional final in Eugene, Ore., Dezianna Patmon's walk-off homer in the bottom of the seventh broke a 7-7 tie and lifted No. 16 Oregon past Stanford. She bats 7th for the Super Regional-bound Ducks.
'Softball is offense-first, built for big hitters,' ESPN analyst Jessica Mendoza, a four-time All-American at Stanford from 1999-2002, said. 'And the game is in such a great place because of it.'
But it wasn't always like this.
In the early days of college softball, which recorded its first season in 1982, pitchers dominated the sport. Back then, the distance between the rubber and home plate was a mere 40 feet, and pitchers were hurling a white ball with white seams. The power pitchers could generate from such a short distance, coupled with a ball that is more difficult to see than today's yellow version, meant runs came in short supply. From 1982-86, the average runs per game across 91 D-I teams was 3.16.
Before the 1987 season, in an effort to generate more offense, a new rule moved pitchers back an additional three feet, to the 43 feet the circle's center currently resides.
But it wasn't enough, so before the 1993 season, the rules committee decided to switch to an optic yellow ball — at the time, research said the human eye could pick up optic yellow faster than any other color — with raised red seams, which would allow hitters to better identify the spin coming at them. (Though college softballs are thrown in a range of 64-70 mph compared to baseball's 87-95 mph range, the movement on a rise ball typically makes it more challenging to hit.)
However, not all coaches were on board with the changes.
'There were a lot of people who were worried about 'ruining the integrity of the game,' and they claimed it was dangerous because now the ball is going to be coming off the bat more, and the pitcher would be vulnerable,' recalled longtime UCLA coach Sue Enquist, who led the Bruins to 10 national championships before retiring in 2006. 'But in my mind, anything that could create more excitement for the fan was going to be a good thing.'
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Since the introduction of the yellow ball, offense has risen steadily, and ERAs have skyrocketed. In 2024, 307 teams averaged 4.34 runs per game, with .61 home runs per game (the record is .77 home runs per game, set in 2015). In 1982, the national ERA was 1.43. Last season it was 3.75.
Now the yellow ball is so intertwined with softball, players like McMillan, who became just the 13th player in the sport's history to hit 30 home runs, can't imagine anything different. She does remember playing with a hot pink ball as a grade schooler, though she joked that 'None of us at that age could see the ball (to hit), regardless of the color.'
Mendoza, who will be on the call in Oklahoma City this week, understands the argument that changing to an optic yellow ball, which also got an updated core, essentially lowered the bar for what makes a great hitter in softball. But she doesn't think that's a bad thing.
'It used to be only big girls could hit the ball hard. But with this ball and with this core, different levels of athleticism can generate power in a variety of ways, which has changed the perception of what makes a great hitter,' Mendoza said. 'Right now, if you can get the barrel extended, the ball is going to fly.'
Enquist believes the fact that everyone can hit makes it a more appealing sport anyway.
'There is no other women's sport that loves the 98-pound slapper as much as it loves the 292-pound catcher,' she said. 'This sport provides access to such a diverse group of body types, and all of them can be successful. That a No. 8 hitter can change the complexion of the game, that's exciting to me.'
The yellow ball isn't the only advantage hitters have in 2025, though.
Talk to any softball coach, pitcher or batter, and they'll all agree: The strike zone in college softball is unbelievably tight.
'Pitchers have to be so precise, they basically have to be perfect to get a called strike,' Arkansas first baseman Bri Ellis, who has hit 26 home runs this season and boasts a .472 batting average, said. 'I go watch baseball and it's like, jeez, you guys have to swing at so much! The zone (in baseball) is so much bigger. In softball, you can sit there and not swing for an entire at-bat and probably get on base (with a walk.)'
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That might seem absurd given the high velocity some pitchers can throw, like Texas Tech's NiJaree Canady, who leads the nation with a 0.81 ERA. But Ellis explained it like this: There's so much film available on every team that coaches can track location, speed, sequence and type of pitches opponents are throwing and then feed that data into a pitching machine, which will then spit out the exact same sequence.
'Basically, you can get 10-12 at-bats against a great pitcher before you face her in real life,' Ellis said. 'You're never going in blind.'
There is no equivalent for batters. You can mirror a pitcher in practice any day, Ellis said. But you can only mimic a hitter.
Advantage offense.
Ellis knows that no matter how exciting her sport is, and how much offense it generates, critics will always find something to nitpick.
'Every single time we post something on social media, like 30 percent of the comments are from men saying stuff like, 'They play on a T-ball field, they should move the fences back, the yellow ball makes it too easy to hit, whatever.'' Ellis said. 'They're such weirdos. It's never women saying this stuff, by the way.'
There's been discussion about moving the fences back — at Devon Park, home to the WCWS, fences are 200 feet down each foul line and 220 feet in centerfield — but Enquist said logistically, it's not realistic. College administrators across the country have spent millions over the last decade upgrading softball stadiums to keep up with the sport's growing popularity. Suddenly changing field dimensions would be another significant cost they hadn't accounted for.
Ellis doesn't see the point in appeasing a few whiny observers anyway.
'The ball (color) makes it more fun for the fans,' Ellisa said. 'We're all facing the evolution of pitching and hitting — we've all had to get better.'
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photos Gary Cosby Jr. / USA Today Network / Imagn Images)