The World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) published the 2018-2021 Official Rules of Softball. The old softball rulebook was replaced by two new and renovated set of rules, one for slowpitch, and one for fastpitch and modified.
A group of Umpires from around the World worked together to re‐organize and re‐word the rules where necessary, to make the rulebooks clearer and easier to understand.
As a result of this work, slowpitch softball has its own official rulebook for the first time in history. Before, the rules of every softball discipline were published all together. This decision makes the slowpitch official rules more accessible and understandable for everyone, an important step in a discipline with a huge amount of people playing socially with friends and family, only for fun.
In the other hand, the new fastpitch rulebook has been reformatted and includes all the modifications approved by the WBSC Softball Congress held last October in Gaborone, Botswana.
Both fastpitch and slowpitch rulebooks are now organized in five different chapters, including: 1.- The Game; 2.- Playing Field and Equipment; 3.- Participants; 4.- Pitching; and 5.- Batting and Baserunning. Alongside, they include six appendices about the playing field, the bats, the balls, the gloves, the umpires, and scoring.
With these new rulebooks, the WBSC is bringing the sport closer to more people around the world, making an important contribution to the growing of the sport.
Softball rulebooks
2018-2021 WBSC Fastpitch Playing Rules
2018-2021 WBSC Slowpitch Playing Rules
