I agree, jd. Every coach wants his #1 to be Cat Osterman, so dominant as to be unhittable even by good hitting teams.
Which IMO is ridiculous -- especially at 43'. How many girls are there like that in each age group in the state? I would say fewer than ten probably. Maybe as few as five.
In my experience there are other sneaky good pitchers who aren't always noticed or respected -- who can pitch to a specific stitch on the catcher's glove, who can keep batters off balance by changing speeds and locations, who can throw with enough bend on it that it will stay out of the way of most bats, and whose strike zone isn't shaped like a circle, but rather like a doughnut.
Pitchers like that aren't noticed because the hitters are able to put it in play. Those pitchers are only notching three or five K's per game, instead of ten or twelve.
But the hitters are off balance and can't ever seem to get a good swing on the ball. Every inning you think the hitters are going to start hammering this pitcher, but at the end of the game they're only able to score a couple runs.
Anyway, those pitchers often don't seem to get the respect they deserve because they're not recording no-hitters every other game.
The really good fastpitch coaches are people with imagination. Anybody can win with Cat pitching for them. But the measure of a great coach is, what can you do with a team full of re-treads, also-rans and castoffs? With a pitcher who's good but not dominant?
Takes brains to be a great softball coach -- and hoping for the next Cat to show up to your tryouts doesn't qualify as anything but wishful thinking...
#1 DOMINANT SUPERSTUD PITCHER NEEDED
So-so team with coach of limited vision and abilities looking for next NCAA World Series phenom pitcher to materialize out of nowhere. Her fastball must have enough zip to part the Red Sea, since this pitcher will deliver our team from the slavery of mediocrity to the Promised Land of showcase tournament championships. Pitcher must be able to make my dull, lackluster life bearable, if only for a few months.