Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Sat Jun 9 09:59:00 2007

>>> You probably won't agree with me, but I totally felt the need to get my point across. I firmly believe that the rise ball actually RISES. Before explaining, I wan't to tell you that I've played since i was 6 and am 16 now. I've gone to 16 and under ASA Nationals(the hardest of all softball leagues) so I have definitely seen the best of the best pitchers. The ones that get full rides to any college they want. And they CAN pitch.
Recently, the Womens College World Series was on. Pitching for Tennessee was Monica Abbott who has earned almost every single award possible for softball. Above someone had mentioned Cat Osterman and Lisa Fernandez. Well lets just say Monica Abbott is definitely better than both of them. She has broken many many records for pitching. Already broke Cat Ostermans record for strikeouts. It's because of the way the ball moves when it comes out of her hands. She makes it move in every direction. Those batters who batted against her would have to disagree with your scientific "proof". Her catcher would too. She DEFINITELY has mastered the rise ball. She has two types. One that moves way above the strike zone to make batters chase it, and one that stays in the strike zone so that batters have no idea which one it is and dont know whether to swing or not.
I currently play fastpitch for my highschool and have played most of my life. The past couple of years in highschool I've found out how a true riseball works. I've batted against a fair few pitchers who could actually make the ball rise. And have caught for one who when I first started catching for her, I couldn't catch up to how fast it rose.
When done correctly, the ball does not begin rising until about twenty feet out in front of the batter. If it is moving up at all until then, its not much. It looks just like a normal fastball and then all of a sudden, it's at your eyeballs. A girl that pitches on a team in my district has such a good riseball it starts out coming in regular and ends up above my head, with us STILL swinging at it. It looks like a perfect meatball then jumps up out of the zone. Plus it's coming in as fast as 70 mph. She pitches so fast you dont even know what happened until you see a yellow blur go past your eyes.
No amount of scientific "proof" that a BASEBALL thrown 100 mph at 55ft or whatever is going to change my mind that a SOFTBALL rises. Since my eyes are at the level the ball comes from while I;m catching for my pitcher, I will definitely say it rises. And you can say that I have that flat earth mentality, but a couple scientists that looked at some random pitcher and said it cant rise, haven't seen a real riseball before. Grab a bat and try and hit Monica Abbotts rise ball, even if you know its coming, its near impossible to connect with. <<<

Hi Alyssa

Congratulations to Monica Abbott for her outstanding performance in the Women’s Softball World Series and for breaking about every strikeout record in the books and thank you for your post as well. I recorded much of Monica Abbott’s phenomenal pitching performance at the Women’s College World Series and agree it requires a high degree of hitting skills to make solid contact with her assortment of pitches.

After reading your post I studied, frame-by-frame, the trajectory of Monica’s “rise ball” from release to the plate. I then studied the trajectory of a MLB “submarine” type pitcher. I found the upward trajectories of each to be very similar.

The MLB pitcher released the ball about 15 feet farther from the plate than Monica, but his release point was about 10 inches lower than Monica’s. Therefore, as stated, their upward trajectories were about the same. – When I get back from the College Baseball World Series, I will markup the two pitches side-by-side with our Motion Analysis software and show it on the board.

Jack Mankin