General Rules of Softball

Video Transcript

"My name is Juan Carlos with Expert Village, and today we're going to be talking about softball for beginners. In this segment, we're going to describe the difference between baseball and softball as far as rules of the game. Everybody has the opinion that baseball and softball are the same. That's wrong. They're not the same. They're similar, but they're not the same. Here's one of the differences. You're allowed to lead off and steal at any point before the pitcher lets go of the ball in baseball. In softball, it's different. You're actually tied to the base and actually have to wait until the pitcher releases the ball in order to steal a base. The second thing is in softball, you are allowed to slap hit. The different types of slap hitting that has been mentioned in college game are different. Another thing is the field is smaller. The field is much, much smaller. It's approximately 60 feet from home to first. In baseball, it's 90 feet. The game is much, much faster and slower in baseball, where more of the strategy and the coaching is applied in softball. Meaning, sacrifice bunts, sacrifice fly, and pulling runners from second to third, advancing runners and so forth. In baseball, you can kind of wait for a big hit in order to win a game. In softball, it's a little different. The game is much faster, plays are done at a much more rapid pace. Also, baseball is played in a 9 inning game, as oppose to softball, which is played with 7 inning game. While the similarities are quite the same as far as how many outs in an inning, which are 3, and the scoring is the same. You still have to touch home plate to score, and the team with the most runs wins, and there has to be a winner. If there's a tie, they go into extra frames until there's a winner. The only exception is in more of the Olympic style, there is an international tiebreaker where we start the inning with a person on second base until we determine a winner. "