[greymule]

And were the baseball mechanics at this time that softball really got going representative of the mechanics that we see in softball today?

Absolutely not. The baseball umps in the 1950s and 1960s all had their own style. An ump who made calls like those NCAA softball umps on TV would have been laughed out of the park. The current softball mechanics did not derive from any era of baseball.

Remember that in many places (certainly here in NJ), high school umps (for example) were hired by the school. They were often simply local ex-ballplayers the coach knew. They didn't attend clinics or even have to differentiate between rule sets. It was simply "baseball rules." In the 1950s (and 1960s), things were far less "official" than today.