FP Softball - Step back during delivery

[WestMichBlue]

Nice setup

Thanks. A little devious perhaps, but it was fun. But - only "partly kidding?"

encourage participation by as many students as possible

I don't see that. Note that NFHS had the no-step-back rule for many years. They changed when ASA did.

The real question is why?

Probably because male pitchers have a lot of power in ASA. As noted, they got 50 years of consistant rules changed only for them. They got the Leap make legal for only them. (It was subsquently make illegal, and now it is back again in modified form.)

Regardless of the rules currently in effect, male pitchers don't like to follow them. I hear from other umpires, and I have experience it myself - being told by the powers-to-be NOT to call any illegal pitches on men pitchers.

And that refutes the claim that the step-back is a rule for the less experienced or less skilled. You cannot say that adult male pitchers fit that catagory.

WMB