Coronado High School

Excellence By Design.

Softball Basic Rules

 

Well, to be honest, the best way to learn the rules of softball is to actually play the game. Until you're actually playing a game, whatever rules we throw at you is something akin to mumbo-jumbo but it all tends to fall into place once the game gets going. However, I'll just put some basic rules here to help, since we've been making our players play plenty of games - so hopefully, it should make vague sense...

 

Batting

When batting, both feet must remain in the batter's box until the ball has been hit. Failing to do so results in the batter being called out.

Each batter gets four balls and three strikes (a ball being a bad pitch, a strike being a good one).

If a batter swings for the pitch, it will be called a strike, regardless of whether it was a ball or strike.

The batters must bat in the same order - failure to do so results in some horribly evil rule complications which I'm not willing to go into here...

The on-deck batter (batter waiting to hit) must not enter the batting box or the field of play until the play resulting from the previous batter has finished.

 

Pitching

The pitcher must begin the pitch with one foot on the pitching rubber.

The pitcher must remain in contact with the pitching rubber until the pitch has been released.

The pitch must reach an arc of between 6-12 feet from the ground.

For a pitch to be called a strike it must be between 6-12 feet at its peak and cross the (home)plate between the batter's front knee and back shoulder. Anything else will be called a ball.

 

Baserunning

Once the batter reaches first base, s/he is then called a baserunner.

You are not obliged to get round all in one go to score - any runner passing home will score, even if s/he has stopped on every single base.

You MUST touch ALL of the bases as you go round.

The baserunner must not deviate from his.her natural running path to avoid a tag, doing so results in the baserunner being called out

If the ball is caught off the bat, if the baserunner has left the base s/he was occupying, s/he MUST return to that base before trying to proceed. This is called tagging up - we'll yell at you lots to tag up and go, which means hold your base until the ball is caught and then run quickly to the next base.

This isn't a rule but listen to your base coaches!

 

Fielding

When the fielding side makes three outs, the teams switch over.

An out is made when the batter strikes out, the ball is caught off the bat, the runner is forced out at a base or the runner is tagged. There are a couple of other ways but we won't go into them here ;)

To force a runner out at a base, the runner must be forced to the next base i.e. the batter is forced to run to first base when s/he hits the ball and if there is anyone on first base, then s/he will be forced to second etc. To force a runner out, the ball must reach the base before the runner and the base player must have control of the ball and must have some part of themself touching the base. It is not necessary to "stump" the base with the ball.

To tag a runner out, all you need to do is touch the runner with the ball or the glove with the ball in it.

If a runner is not forced, s/he MUST be tagged in order to be called out.

If the ball is overthrown and goes dead, the runners are awarded TWO bases from the last base touched at THE POINT OF THE THROW. This one's important!

The ball can be caught and an out made if the ball is hit foul but NOT if the ball is hit into dead ball territory. Once the ball is caught in foul, the ball is LIVE and the runners can run if they wish - so stay aware ;)