USA Softball is turning 90 years old this year, marking it as a truly venerable sports organization. First founded in Chicago, Ill., in 1933 to oversee one of the first major tournaments of the sport, it was then known as the Amateur Softball Association (ASA). A year later the 1934 National Recreation Congress recognized ASA and from there the organization rose to oversee the sport in the U.S.
The organization later joined the ranks of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee after being named the national governing body for softball in 1978—which elevated USA Softball as the only softball organization with the opportunity to field an Olympic softball team.
The sport of softball itself has a long story as well. Like the organization that would eventually oversee it, the sport was born in Chicago. It was Thanksgiving Day, 1887, when several Yale and Harvard alumni gathered in the city’s Farragut Boat club, eagerly awaiting the final score from their alma maters’ annual football match. Money and school pride were on the line.
The ticker-tape machine delivered the news: Yale had won. Bets were settled and the Yale alumni began to celebrate with great cheer—and drinks. As the story goes, one of the Yale students decided to jokingly throw a boxing glove at one of the Harvard grads. Using quick thinking, the grad reached for a nearby broom and swung it at the glove like a baseball bat, sending it sailing overhead.
A business reporter named George Handcock was also in the boat club that night and watched the scene play out. Eventually, he convinced the grads to turn their energy into a game. He tied the boxing glove into a ball shape, drew a baseball diamond behind the club, and gave the broomstick to the players to use like a bat. From this improvised set-up came the first recorded game of softball.
The sport soon took off, and Handcock began hosting weekly games at his house. In 1889, he released the first official ruleset for the game. It became a favorite pastime in Chicago’s fire departments, armories, and schoolyards.
Softball’s popularity began spreading throughout the U.S., especially during the Great Depression. Part of this was because of the game’s low barrier to entry: at the time, few people could afford baseball gloves, but softball had no such requirements. It was the perfect substitute for the other sport.
This popularity also led to the 1933 tournament in Chicago, out of which came the ASA, which later rebranded as USA Softball in 1966—and the rest is history. The organization will mark its 90th anniversary with a special logo calling that long history to memory.
