[Strike3UROUT]

Many of my fellow IHSA umpires have gone to either 75% of their schedule as softball or some even softball ONLY.

One of the biggest reasons is time of game. If you have two good pitchers in a HS softball game you are looking at between 1 hour to 1 hour and 20 minutes to play the game. Unfortunately in our are HS baseball has a lot of athletes trying to pitch but NOT a lot of good pitchers. After you get to the #2 or #3 pitcher on the team there are a lot of walks and a lot of base hits allowed. I averaged out all the baseball games I worked last year and came up with 1hour and 55 minutes on the average with 3 hours and 3 minutes being the longest. I had several HS softball games that ended in under 1hr and 15 minutes and none that went over 2 hours. Another thing to remember is that softball pitchers can pitch 2-3 times or more a week so you really never see their #3 pitcher at all.

I have always enjoyed baseball and will not go to all softball. However, if I worked 3 or 4 days in a row I'm smiling when I see that my Friday game is a softball game.