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Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

There is a VAST difference between softball (big ball with relatively lower velocity) and baseball (smaller ball with faster velocity). To the point where they're almost not the same game.

Softball is about putting the hit to a particular spot on the field while in baseball hit control really isn't a thing as it's tough enough to nail the ball.

And why would you make fouls benefit the pitcher? Benefiting the hitter is always more exciting. If you really want to speed things up, make fouls benefit the hitter. 4 fouls and you get on base will add quite a bit to the scoring and make ties quite a bit less frequent. It would also make the pitchers have to put stuff where the batter can smack it also increasing score and decreasing likelihood of ties.

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I think you are looking at it from the wrong point of view.

Playing baseball starts at a very young age - 4,5,6 years old. At that point the game is, more or less, a subset of the baseball rules. As a player gets older, they add more rules but aren't really modifying the existing ones that you've already learned. It's a really nice system.

At some point, softball branches off. The rules are generally parallel to each other so switching between the two is just a matter of calibrating your mindset and equipment.

You can say that there is a vast difference between them and be right. But you can also say that they are nearly the same and be right.

You're 100% right about this rule benefiting the pitcher. Parallel to this you have to do something to reduce his advantages. Famously, they lowered the mound to do this.

I'm curious how the 61-foot mound in the minor leagues is working out.

Softball is a bigger ball, yes. But it's not lower velocity, at least if you consider the relevant metric: time from pitcher to plate. Because softball also pitches a lot closer to the plate.

Not to be a pill but velocity (in physics and as-used in the preceding posts) is well-defined and includes both time and distance. So if reducing distance results in the same time then, indeed, the velocity must be lower.

If one is talking abstractly about the “velocity” of the game I suppose a point could be made about that.

I think he's thinking fast-pitch softball, where the ball does indeed get to the plate in a comparable time.

In slow-pitch, which I was talking about, it's no contest.

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