As this issue reaches you, we are well into the qualifying stages for the various National Championship events. Since my last column, I’ve had the pleasure of attending a few tournaments in the Northern California area, and yes the game is alive and well. Here are a few observations I had during these events that I thought I’d pass on to you.

On the pitching distance for Gold, it appears that the concept of offering both Gold and ‘A’ divisions has become very popular. It offers several positives; maintaining fairly consistent competition for the Gold teams and larger events for the ‘A’ teams that utilize their pitching distance.

Of course the downside is that these larger ‘A’ events are mostly due to 16U teams moving up to find better competition. This can dilute the competition level at both the ‘A’ and 16U events.

Gold teams are adjusting just fine to the new pitching distance. While there has been an increase in the offense, it is not as drastic an increase as some may have predicted prior to the start of the playing season. Quality pitchers are still having a major impact on the games, and as those high school pitchers earn more time in the circle, the pitching will improve.

Participation at the lower age divisions also is very strong, and from what I’ve been reading, it looks like near-record numbers of teams are participating in the local association qualifiers.

At one of the events I attended, though not a qualifier, there were about 118 teams participating in all of the age divisions. I was able to catch games for several of the age divisions, and it was great to see some exciting games, but more importantly, young ladies having a great time enjoying our great game.

COLLEGE WORLD SERIES
Well, it has now become the standard that all of the NCAA Women’s Softball World Series games are televised, as are some of the Regionals and Super Regionals. Therefore, unlike the past few years, I’m not going to waste space talking about how great ESPN is for broadcasting the games and stating what a wonderful coo it is for the game, because it has become apparent that if the games are enough of a financial success, they will be shown for some time to come.

So instead of stroking ESPN, I’m going to take some space to speak to some problems with the telecasts and some of the positives. Many of the softball web sites that include message boards contain plenty of opinions on the quality of the announcers of these games. And to some extent, there is some merit to these comments. During the past three years, the play-by-play announcing has improved tremendously. Is it still at the level of the NCAA Baseball World Series? No, but at least they now show knowledge of the game, and probably from the casual viewer’s point of view, they appear competent.

It seems that most softball enthusiasts prefer Stacy Nuveman to Lisa Fernandez as color commentators, and I agree with this assessment. However, I do disagree with some softball knowledgeable folks that feel that either or both tend to state the obvious.

If you are a true softball fan and you have been around the game for a period of time, some of what these two ladies state is obvious. However, some of these items would not be obvious to the casual viewer. Let’s face it, ESPN is available to most of the country and the network is trying to build a broad viewer base. Most individuals in this country have little or no knowledge of the game. So stating what is obvious to us is not necessarily stating what is obvious to a majority of viewers, if ESPN has done a decent job of attracting new viewers to the games.

Perhaps the most glaring problem with the commentating is the fact that there is general lack of knowledge of some rules and some calls by the game officials. Stacy at least prefaced her attempts of discussing such situations by stating "According to my understanding of the rules," where as Lisa spoke as if she was an authority on the rules and calls. In many cases they were completely wrong, and they were wrong on some very basic calls. We expect either the play-by-play or color commentator to have a good idea of what is always happening on the field.

I got a little tired of watching some of the fluff stuff over and over again, but again, the network wants to add that personal touch to the games, and not everyone in TV land watched every game (except for hardcore fans like me and some of you).

There were some complaints when ESPN cut away from a Super Regional game to catch Barry Bonds breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record. Some went as far as to say it was a slap in the face of softball. I really don’t see it that way. With the exception of perhaps an NFL game, I think ESPN would have given this historic feat the same treatment no matter what was on at the time.

All in all, ESPN did their usual fine job with televising the games. There were some notable exceptions of missed plays, or partially missed plays, but if ESPN continues to use the same production crew and camerapersons each year, this will improve, and this year was an improvement over the previous two years.

I really don’t have any major problems with the job ESPN did, and I’m very happy I had the opportunity to see as many games as I was able to.

FOUL TIPS
I’m off to more games the next two weekends, and then off to the Canada Cup once again the first week of July. I hope to see you on the field.

As always, you can contact me at floydeunslip@yahoo.com_and so the ball rolls.