Should Women's College Softball Move the Distance of the Pitching Mound?

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about the Women's College Softball World Series and I was asked by fellow writer Brian Joura if I thought that the pitching mound in softball should be moved back. This is a common question because in softball the pitching mound is closer than it is in baseball. Because of the close distance softball is a very pitching dominated sport. Anybody that tuned into the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament would have seen several shut-outs and even a lot of 1 - 0 scores. I'm not really sure why so many people ask this question because everything about the distance between the batter's box and the pitching mound in softball is good. Women's College Softball should not move the pitcher's mound.

Any time that something new is being marketed it shouldn't be exactly the same as another product. The XFL failed because it was the NFL with worse players. Arena Football has survived because it is different. Women's College Softball is the same way. If anybody actually tried to push Women's College Softball I think it would do way better than, say the WNBA because the fact that Women's College Softball is such a pitching dominated sport makes it a lot different than Major League Baseball. Major League Baseball continues to have ballparks designed for hitters, there are conspiracies about juicing balls and they even turned away when they knew their players were using performance enhancing drugs. All of this has led to record numbers in hitting while pitching numbers are pretty pathetic. The pitching in Women's College Softball is a breath of fresh air compared to Major League Baseball.