It has been a long time since I wrote lol! Not a ton of softball going on right now, so not much to write about. But I'll talke about a few things and then I'm going to tell you about about 10 all time favorite softball players. I though I'd done this before but in going through my blogs I didn't find anything like this and if I did and I missed I'm sure so of them have changed lol. If not I'm sorry to waste your time lol.
The NPF Back to School Tour was great! The NPF wasn't quite as successful as years past droping 3 games(Michigan, ULL, and Oklahoma for the 2nd year in a row). But it was still fun to watch! I was thrilled by how many schools had livestreaming and I saw alot of good softball by not just the NPF but the college teams as well! I'm itching for the next college and NPF seasons already!!
The Japanese legaue wraped up their season last weekend with their version of the championship series I guess lol. Again rain came in to play but better planning meant that they got everything in! Danielle Lawrie, Megan Willis, and their Shokki teammates had a wonderful season, especially the 2nd half of the season! I wasn't sure at the beginning of the 2nd half of the season that they would even make the playoffs but they had a fantastic 2nd half of the season and just snuck by Honda for the 4th spot! They played Denso to start the weekend. They hadn't beat Denso all season and I knew they wanted that win. I wanted that win. Denso is the team that Jordan Taylor and Megan Wiggins play for, so you can put 2 and 2 together as to why I wanted them to beat Denso so bad other than wanting them to have a chance at the championship lol. Danielle was fantastic! She didn't give up a hit until the 5th or 6th inning and ended the game with only 2 hits! She pitched her heart out and looked incredible! Shokki finally got their win against Denso, winning 1-0! The moved on to play Toyota the next day! The next day it was raining but they started the game anyway. It was wet, muddy, and cool. Finally the field got to be in too bad a shape and the rain wasn't letting up so they called the games for the day after 3.5 innings. I was thinking they'd pick it up in the bottom of the 4th the next day but apparently the rules are different in the Japan leauge and they had to start all over the next day. Danielle pitched well but Toyota was too much and they lost. But they still placed 3rd and in that league that is pretty dang good! Toyota and Renesas played 10 innings before Toyota finally got the win and won their 3rd championship in a row! Monica Abbott was named MVP and she totally earned it! In 48 hours time she pitched 28 innings and that is after 9 months of almost non-stop softball! Ueno was impressive herself as always! In my opinion, those 2 are probably the top pitchers in the world with Cat Osterman right behind them. Always exciting to watch them duke it out and I got to watch them duke it out twice in 48 hours times! I enjoyed it :)! I also enjoyed watching 2 younger up and comming greats duke it out in Danielle Lawrie and Jordan Taylor! All around agreat weekend of softball!
Now I'm going to move on to my top 10 all time favorite softball players! I thought about doing pitchers and there will be alot of pitchers because I like pitchers lol. But I decided to include everyone. Maybe one day I'll do like top 5 pitchers, catchers, infielders, and outfielders! That would be fun but not today lol. So here we go!
10. Kelly Kretschman! Kelly is an Alabama Alumni where she broke several hitting records and left as one of the best hitters to not only play for the Tide but to ever play the game. She was an alernate for the 2000 Olympic Gold team and was apart of the 2004 gold medal team and the 2008 silver medal team. She was also one of the first national team members and big name players to believe and sign to play in the NPF! She started with the Akron Racers in 2005 and played her 4th season with the Pride and 7th season in the league last season. She is the oldest woman in the league at 33 but to watch her play you'd never know it! She is still one of the best all around hitters in the NPF! She can hit for power but she also has the speed to lay down a bunt and steal bases! She is one of those players that you just never get tired of watching!
9. Crystl Bustos! Anybody who knows anything about softball knows who Crystl Bustos is! In my opinion she is the single best hitter to ever play this game! She has an icredible swing and when she unloads on a ball she can hit it futher than any hitter I have ever seen! I think the ironic thing is she didn't even attend a division 1 school! She went to a community college! How did every division 1 and 2 school miss that? I'll never understand it myself! She is a big muslcuar woman who alot of people think looks scary. But one thing I've figured out over the years of watching her and with talking to her on Twitter and reading her tweet is she has a huge huge huge heart! She is a very sweet sensitive person! She has given and continues to give back so much to this sport! She is not playing right now but I've seen talk of a comeback on her twitter page, so we'll see what happens!
8. Yukiko Ueno! I know most of you are ready to hit me here or call me trader but I can't help it! She is without a doubt one of the best and most dominating pitchers I have ever had a the oppurtunity of watching! She has changed the look of Japanese softball forever! She has an incredible combination of speed and movement to her pitches that leaves hitters either looking dumb or just completely stunned! At worlds this past summer she threw over 30 innings in 2 days, won the gold medal, and turned 30! But what makes her even more special is that she is also one of the best hitters Japan has ever produced! A pitcher that hits is dieing art I'm afraid and I really hate that. Coaches are afraid of injuries and want to protect their pitchers and I get that. But you are really hurting these athletes I think by taking them from being what I refer to as a 3 demensional player to 1 demensional! But Ueno has been lucky that her coaches continue to allow her to hit and do her thing! I often say I don't believe she is fully human because she is just so good and never seems to get tired! So hate me all you want but I love to watch this woman do her thing!
7. Natsha Watley! Natasha Watley is probably the fastest softball player I've ever had the pleasure of watching! There are other extremely fast players( Caitlin Lowe, Kimi Pohlman, Rhea Taylor just to the name a few) but none as fast as Natasha. She went to UCLA and won a National Championship as well as many other awards and personal highlights. She played on the 2004 Gold medal Olympic team and the 2008 silver medal and many more! She has been everywhere and done everything! She is an amazing athlete! She has also started her own foundation to further not only softball but women's sports as a whole!
6. Lisa Fernandez! Lisa Fernandez was one the first pitchers I remember watching and just adoring! She was an incredible pitcher with a ton of energy! She loves softball so much and you could just see it on her face! She like all these other women has a long long long list of awards and achievments! She went to UCLA and is now the pitching coach there. She played on the National Team leading the team to 3 Gold medals in the Olympics! She has given and continues to give so much to softball and women's sports in general! She without a doubt will always be viewed as the one the best pitchers to ever play the game and I am glad I got to witness it!
5. Monica Abbott! As I said when talking about the Japanese league championship she in my opinion is one of, if not the top pitcher in the world right now! She is a dominating pitcher in every sense of the word. She is very tall at 6ft 3in! She is probably the hardest throwing pitcher in the game right now and maybe ever, easily hitting 71+. But she is isn't all speed. Pitchers with just speed don't dominate because it's easier to adjust to speed! She has movement, great movement! She has movement that seems to only get better with age! And last but not least she is like the Energizer Bunny, she keeps going and going and going and going and going lol! You don't want to get in a pitchers dual with her, especially if goes into extras because the longer she pitches the stronger she gets! I've watched her since she played for Tennessee and she was an amazing pitcher back then but over the years she has only gotten better and better and better! I enjoy watching her pitch as long as she isn't pitching against one of teams....saddly it happens more often than not that she is pitchng against my team lol!
4. Megan Willis! I haven't watched Megan Willis as long as I've watched any of the others players. She just wasn't on my radar honestly. But Megan is easily one of the best catchers I've ever seen. She is good at calling games, knowing the pitcher she is catching for, and most of all she is good at throwing out runners! She has a cannon for an arm and I know I wouldn't consider trying to steal on her lol! She has a wonderful firey personality that makes her so much fun to watch! There isn't a catcher that I like to watch more!
3. Cat Osterman! Cat is a completely different pitcher than the others I've talked about. The other pitchers I talked about have a deadly combination of speed and movement. Cat doesn't have the speed. She has never been known and will never be known as a power pitcher. But that's okay because she doesn't need the power. To be very hoest to pitch at the level she does you typically need atleast some speed but if you have the movement of Cat you don't lol! Cat unlike Lisa Fernandez is very poised, quiet, and almost unreadable in the circle. That is part of what I think makes her so dominating. Her emotions rarley get the best of her. She doesn't ride the wave of the game. She just does what Cat does!
2. Jenn Salling! I think she gets very over looked in the grand scheme of things but she won me over the first time I ever watched her play. The first I saw her play was for the Canadian National team! She dominates the infield! I've talked about her before but you get to read it again lol. She is fast, she thinks fast, she reacts fast, and she can throw across the diamond like nobody I've seen before(there is a video on Youtube of her throwing out Rhea Taylor all the way from behind 3rd base to 1st during Super Regionals 2 years ago that I could watch over and over and over and in fact have! Look it up, it's a thing of beauty!). She is what is refered to in softball as a tripe threat. She can slap, bunt, and hit for power! She has speed and isn't afraid to take a risk! She is a leader. She is always cheering, encouraging, and giving advice. She speaks and people listen! She is incredibly selfless! She loves softball, she loves the women she plays with, and she loves her fans! But the thing I love most about Jenn is her story. She fought to get where she is. She did something few other people have done and it paid off big! She started off at Oregon. She red shirted her freshman year. Her redshirt freshman year she tore it up! She set records and made a huge name for herself both in the field and with her bat. In 2008, she redshirted again to play in the Olympics for Canada and during that time decided even with the success she was having in Oregon she wasn't happy and decided to transfer. Because she decided to transfer to Washington which was in the same confrence she had two choices. One she had to miss an entire season and just lose that season or two she had to go get an Associate degree. She chose to do the 2nd. She worked her butt off and got ther Associates degree and was cleared to paly for Washington in April of 2009! She went on to be key in their National Championship as well as a huge part of the team in 2010! But I think the biggest thing Jenn did was in her Senior season. Everyone one and their dog predicited UW to fall off in a big way with the loss of Danielle Lawrie. But with an incredible freshman pitcher that turned out to better than anybody could have guessed she would be and the incredible leadership of Jenn the team made it all the way back to Super Regionals! It's unreal to me that it's been almost 2 years since she played for the Huskies! She is still kind of waiting in the wings for her turn to break out in the NPF but it's coming! I know it is and she'll keep pushing until it does because she never gives up!
1. Last but not least and I'm sure you guys already knew this, Danielle Lawrie! When Coach Tarr took over the troubled UW program the first player she recruited was Danielle and I think we all fully understand why! Danielle combines speed and killer movement to keep batters always guessing. She has one of the best change ups in the world! Danielle fully understands the game of softball. In college, obviously she dominated in the circle but she also left UW as one of their best hitters. That is what I orginally loved about her. She was all over the field and dominating in all of them lol. She broke all kinds of records as a pitcher, threw several no hitters and perfect games. And then she could turn around and belt a homerun as well lol! She is passionate and competitive! You can tell with ease what she is thinking and feeling! She is leader and people naturally are drawn and listen to her. She is just an all around incredible athlete! She is a 2 time National Player of the Year and she did something nobody had done before and nobody has done since. She won National Player of the Year the same year she won a National Championship! Sadly she hasn't been as lucky as Ueno and most of the teams she plays for now do not let her hit. It seems like such a waste to me but they have their reasons I suppose! Danielle is young and she has many seasons ahead of her! I will be surprised if she isn't the best pitcher in the world by the time she retires. She is certainly pretty close now! A few more years of experience and no doubt in my mind she'll be a force to reckoned with!
There are many more I adore that I wish I could have included! I almost wish I would have done top 20 but this alone took me several hours lol! There are so many amazing softball players out there! That's one of the reasons I love this game so much! These women are talented and hard working and they do everything they do simply because they love the game!
