The ball actually was soft when the sport started. The very first softball, played in Chicago in 1887, was a boxing glove with the laces tied together. Over the next few decades, players used small medicine balls and other improvised spheres made from soft materials like kapok (a cottony plant fiber) and rubber. The name stuck even as the ball evolved into something that could bruise your hand or break your fingers.
The 1887 Boxing Glove Game
Softball traces back to Thanksgiving Day 1887 at the Farragut Boat Club in Chicago. A group of men waiting for the results of the Yale-Harvard football game started batting around a tied-up boxing glove with a broomstick. The game caught on immediately, and people began playing indoors through the winter using whatever soft, oversized ball they could find. Those early balls were genuinely soft, which was the whole point: you could play inside a gymnasium without shattering windows or injuring bystanders.
How the Sport Got Its Name
For nearly 40 years, the game had no single name. Different cities called it different things: “kitten ball” in Minneapolis, “diamond ball” after 1922, “mush ball” and “pumpkin ball” in other regions. Most of these names nodded to the ball’s soft, squishy character.
In 1926, a physical education director named Walter Hakanson proposed unifying all these regional variants under one name: softball. The YMCA had been promoting the sport as a cleaner alternative to baseball, which they associated with drinking and gambling during Prohibition. “Softball” made sense at the time because the ball was still noticeably softer and larger than a baseball. Hakanson would later become president of the Amateur Softball Association, and his chosen name became permanent.
When the Ball Stopped Being Soft
The ball went through several generations of materials. After the boxing glove era, manufacturers moved to kapok-filled cores, then rubber, then cork. Each version got harder and more durable as the sport shifted from indoor gymnasiums to outdoor diamonds and competitive leagues demanded consistency. Today’s regulation softballs have a polyurethane core (a dense synthetic polymer) with a leather or synthetic cover stitched and glued over it. That core is solid enough that high school fastpitch balls are manufactured to withstand 275 to 375 pounds of compression force.
A modern 12-inch fastpitch softball weighs between 6.5 and 7 ounces, with a circumference just under 12.25 inches. For comparison, a baseball weighs about 5 ounces and measures 9 inches around. The softball is bigger and heavier, but “soft” is the last word most players would use to describe it.
The One Version That’s Still Actually Soft
There is one holdout. Chicago never abandoned the original spirit of the game and still plays with a 16-inch ball known as a “mushball.” This larger, softer ball is the direct descendant of those early gymnasium games. Its softness is the defining feature: players field it barehanded, with no gloves. The 16-inch game is always slow-pitched, making it easier for batters to make contact, and it remains a staple of Chicago recreational leagues. Even so, longtime Chicago players will tell you that a brand-new 16-inch ball can still break fingers on a hard-hit grounder.
How a Softball Compares to a Baseball
Despite the misleading name, a softball can do just as much damage as a baseball. Biomechanical research has found that the forces at the shoulder and elbow during a windmill softball pitch are comparable to those in an overhand baseball pitch, and injury rates for pitchers in both sports are similar. The softball’s larger size means it doesn’t travel as fast off the bat, but pitching distances are shorter (43 feet in fastpitch versus 60.5 feet in baseball), which compresses reaction time and keeps the game intense.
The internal construction is different, too. Baseballs are built from wool yarn wound tightly around a cork or rubber center. Softballs skip the yarn entirely and use a solid polyurethane core. That core gives a softball its characteristic thud on contact, compared to the sharper crack of a baseball. Neither ball is forgiving if it hits you.
Why the Name Never Changed
By the time the ball hardened into its modern form, “softball” was already embedded in league names, rule books, and national organizations. The Amateur Softball Association had been governing the sport since 1933. Renaming it would have been like trying to rename football because you mostly use your hands. The name had simply outgrown its literal meaning. It now describes the sport itself, not the texture of the ball, a relic of an 1887 boxing glove and the indoor gym games that followed.