In fastball, both amazing all-around team performances or unbelievable individual ones can lead a team to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds. We dug through the annals of softball history looking for the best examples of both.
Below is our list of the six biggest upsets in softball history.
In fastball, both amazing all-around team performances or unbelievable individual ones can lead a team to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds. We dug through the annals of softball history looking for the best examples of both.Â
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Below is our list of the six biggest upsets in softball history.
Although it was only a five-team tournament and the U.S. hadn’t quite yet established their level of softball dominance that was to come in later decades, the first Women’s Softball World Championship was inaugurated with a major upset in its championship game. Despite being held to two hits, the host Australians defeated the inventors of the sport 1-0.
The University of Arizona dominated collegiate softball in the 90s, winning five titles in seven years. That trend looked like it was going to continue as the Wildcats cruised to a 2001 World Series title behind the pitching of who TIME magazine named the most famous softball player ever, Jennie Finch.
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Finch and her ‘Cats looked set to repeat in 2002, cruising their way into the Championship to face the 4-seed California Golden Bears. While Cal was not new to the World Series scene by any means, they had never made an appearance in the title game before. Despite having a much younger and less-experienced team than Arizona, the pitching of Cal’s Jocelyn Forest (later voted the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player) led her ballclub to a 6-0 victory (giving up only one hit in the process) and Cal’s first women’s NCAA Championship in any sport.
For over 50 years, Eddie Feigner and his four man fastpitch team, “The King and His Court†toured the world, taking on all-comers. Essentially the Harlem Globetrotters of softball, the dream team won close to 10,000 games during which Feigner, dubbed the greatest softball pitcher ever, recorded 140,000 strikeouts in that span.
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Sure, many of those numbers were racked up against local ragtag church teams. But in 1981 during the Major League Baseball strike, Feigner got a real test. In a game before 16,000 at the Pontiac Silverdome, Feigner--who was 56 at the time--and his four-man crew beat a nine-man team made up of various major league players, cementing his legacy as the greatest fastball pitcher that ever lived. A few decades earlier, Feigner reportedly gave a same treatment to several future Hall of Famers in a charity all-star game, retiring Willie Mays, Brooks Robinson, Roberto Clemente, Harmon Killebrew, and Willie McCoy in a row.
While women’s fast pitch has gained more parity recently on the international level with the rise of nations like Japan, North America and the Pan-American Games have always belonged to the United States. Until recently.
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The 2015 tournament saw Canada and the States face off three times throughout the course of the tournament, with the U.S. winning by a combined score of 12-2 in the preliminary round and the semi-final. Canada crept into the final after winning in the bronze medal game to set up a rematch for the Championship. The score 0-0 after the normal amount of frames, the Canadians cranked out four runs in extra innings to hang on and beat the heavily favored Americans 4-2 for their first Pan Am Championship since 1983.
With more recent tournaments like this, the game has seen an increase in popularity, not just with spectators but also in the sports betting market. Whilst for American fans this is a rather gray area, for Canadian gamblers it’s much easier. With exciting games like this one, there’s also the option to do ‘in match’ betting, making for an even more fun experience.
One of the reasons softball was cancelled from the Olympic program after the 2008 Summer Games was due to a lack of international competition. So perhaps ironically, the last Olympic softball game ever played (until at least 2020) featured one of the sport’s biggest upsets ever.
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To set the stage for the 2008 gold medal game in Beijing, the dominant Americans had not lost in 22 games, dating back to 2000, and were the only nation to ever win gold in the sport that was first introduced to the Olympics in 1996. History looked destined to repeat itself, especially since the underdog Japanese limped into the final after an exhausting 12-inning victory over Australia in a playoff game. Despite pitching 28 innings and over 200 pitches in the final two days of the tournament, Japanese star Yukiko Ueno led her team to a 3-1 victory and the gold medal in the last Olympic softball game.
How could a meaningless exhibition be the greatest softball upset of all time? Well, even though it was meaningless in the sense that no medals were awarded, it was no less a game that shook the softball world.
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As a tuneup for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Team USA--comprised mostly of players in the prime of their careers--’invited’ the 18-22 year olds of Virginia Tech to play in an exhibition that would surely just be a story for the visiting Hokies to tell their kids one day. Turns out it would be much more than that, as Virginia Tech pitcher Angela Tincher (cut by Team USA just several weeks prior) would go on to do the unthinkable and pitch a no-hitter against a line-up of the world’s best hitters.
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Before the loss, Team USA had won 185 straight games outside of Olympic competition, making this their first pre-Olympic exhibition loss since 1996. In those games, the national team outscored their opponents 1,475-24. To add to the legend, on the mound for Team USA was none other than Ms. Jennie Finch.
