I would like to take a shot at this one because being I parent coach I sometimes take exception to how easily the term "daddy ball" is thrown out there.
First and foremost, I don't think you will ever get rid of "daddy/mommy ball" because, in general, many of the "more motivated" travel type kids come along with "more motivated" parents who are accustomed to taking on leadership roles. Every year on many of these teams you have 2-3 parents positioning themselves to either take a new team, or take over an existing team. Some of them are very qualified. When you compare that to the much fewer qualified non-parent coaches wanting to build up a program for free you get what we have now... parent-coach dominated travel softball. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but of course your experience will depend on the vision of the coach.
Secondly, I think when you look at the top organizations there are a lot of parents coaching. But, they are certainly not all run by moms/dads who's agenda is to get more playing time for their daughters... I think it goes a little deeper than that. Anyone who has ever crossed my path in softball knows I have a personal goal to see better recruiting opportunities for Ohio kids by D1/D2/NAIA schools. For my oldest daughter, we actually left the state to go play with a Chicago-based team so that she could get the kind of exposure and level of play she needed to be recruited. Now, starting over with my 10u daughter, I see no reason those opportunities can't be more prevalent in this state. However, getting a group of 12-14 Ohio girls ready to play in the "top-tier" recruiting circuit by the time they are 14-15 yrs old requires a whole lot of planning, time and sacrifice... the kind that you are much more likely to get from someone with a little skin in the game. This is not easy work! Looking at what IL Chill coaches Gerry Quinn and Pat Morris (both previous parent coaches, both with daughters in D1 programs) did for so many girls in IL, IN, OH, WI, etc... I don't think it is the parent-coach that is the problem. More likely it is just programs/families with mismatched short and long-term goals.