ESPN.com's Bill Connelly offers an overview of the college softball season thus far (mid-April), reviewing the top teams and players. As Connelly writes, the SEC is domiant. However, the conference's two newest arrivals -- pre-season favorites Texas and Oklahoma -- have each lost a few games. Instead, for the moment at least, the focus is on Texas A&M (15-5 vs. RPI top 25 and winners of 16 of its last 17 games) and Tennessee (winners of four out of six games combined vs. Oklahoma and Texas, but only 10-8 vs. the RPI top 25).
This Friday (and all remaining Fridays of the regular season), I will preview the upcoming weekend's games. Before doing so, I wanted to do an entry, primarily for sports fans who have not watched much softball, on differences they could expect to see between softball and baseball. The Sandy Plains Softball Association of Marietta, Georgia has produced a document entitled Fastpitch 101 , which details the similarities and differences in the rules of the two sports. Here are some of my own observations from over the years: 1. Because the bases are considerably closer together in softball (60 feet) than in baseball (90 feet), softball infielders consistently must pick up ground balls and make their throws to first base quickly, in order to get the runner. In other words, many (if not most) softball grounders result in "bang-bang" plays at first base, necessitating a lot of close calls by first-base umpires, who must detect whether the thrown ball (to the first-baseperso...