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Originally Posted by bkbjones
This is a bad thing because...?
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Because it practically makes it an INDIVIDUAL sport that masquerades as a TEAM sport.
I realize what I suggested (force a 2nd pitcher's participation) will never happen.
The example you give of quarterbacks and goalies is invalid when compared to fastpitch softball.
Football and hockey teams often overcome the lack of a superstar as either their quarterback or goalie. One comes to mind instantly - the 2001 Super Bowl champions, the Baltimore Ravens, with Trent Dilfer at the helm. They won
despite him, not
because of him. They were so impressed with his abilities to "lead" them to a Super Bowl championship that they promptly traded before the commencement of the next season.
You'll see no such examples in fastpitch softball.
It's nearly impossible to win a fastpitch championship with a dominating defense. Good hitting will often cause you to come up short if your pitching is only "good", but not
GREAT. Average pitching gets you nowhere even with
tremendous defense and hitting.
But this is just the nature of fastpitch softball, for better or worse. True fans of the game, of which I am one, accept this as an unavoidable reality. Functionally, a team needs but
one pitcher. The other pitcher is only "needed" to pitch inconsequential games, games in which the outcome is predetermined regardless who pitches because of the disparity in the teams, or should the ace pitcher get injured.
In most team sports you can win with a superior
element of your game, whether it be defense or offense. Sometimes it's a combination of the two. But seldom is it a particular
individual on whom the team relies, game after game after game.
As great as Peyton Manning was, he
eventually won his team a Super Bowl. But he was dangerously close to being dubbed another Marino, a great player who could never win the "big one."
Fastpitch softball becomes very interesting when the opposing pitchers are BOTH superstars because this is the rare time when those other elements come into play. But sadly, the game is usually such a low-scoring affair (ala soccer), that the result often hinges on some quirky, or unfortunate event that does not really reveal that one team is better than another, rather, that one team is simply
luckier than the other - at least for
this game.
David Emerling
Memphis, TN