This Week in Softball Fri, Jun 19, 2026
📌
Portable Speaker Lost

Scott Jackson reports that he left a portable speaker on Field 4 last Friday. It was not turned in. Did anyone recover it? If so, please contact Scott as he would like to get it back.

How fast is a slo-pitch pitch?

Mark Kelly and I were discussing the idea of a poor-man's Hawk-Eye system - something that could tell whether a pitch falls within the legal 6-to-12-foot arc. The math behind that is outside my purview, so I asked AI. I won't bore you with the whole answer, but one question I asked is, how fast, or slow, can you actually throw a softball and still land it on the strike mat?

Here's the answer: The slowest legal pitch reaches 12 feet and lands on the very front of the plate, crossing at about 27 mph and giving the batter roughly 1.65 seconds to track it.

The fastest stays flat at a 6-foot arc and hits the back of the mat at about 33 mph, leaving the batter 1.1 seconds.

For comparison, a big-league fastball reaches the plate in about 0.4 seconds - so even our hardest pitch gives a hitter nearly three times as long to watch it come in.

Coming Up

Wed, Sep 16, 2026
9:00 AM Shorebirds vs Thunder 1
9:00 AM Stars vs Bengals 2
9:00 AM Rebels vs Crusaders 4
10:30 AM Wolverines vs Raptors 1
10:30 AM Gunslingers vs Lightning Strikes 2
10:30 AM Xtreme vs Bad News Bears 4
View full schedule →

Standings

TeamWLPct
Raptors 3 0 1.000
Stars 3 0 1.000
Wolverines 3 0 1.000
Gunslingers 2 1 .667
Rebels 2 1 .667
Thunder 2 1 .667
Bad News Bears 1 2 .333
Bengals 1 2 .333
Crusaders 1 2 .333
Lightning Strikes 0 3 .000
Shorebirds 0 3 .000
Xtreme 0 3 .000
Full Standings →

Stat Leaders

AVG Darrell Phillips 1.000
Rick Sunderman 1.000
Kurtis Lamb .917
HR Tim Walker 5
Mike Cudworth 5
Ken Smith 4
RBI Tim Walker 17
Duwayne Matz 16
Brian Brown 12
OBP Darrell Phillips 1.000
Rick Sunderman 1.000
Craig Horton .889
Full Statistics →