The game of softball is a derivative of baseball. This game is played by more than forty million Americans a year. That is what makes softball the number one participant sport in the United States.
		The game began in 1887 in Chicago. 1927 was the first attempt to make the rules serious. There are two types of softball: fast pitch and slow pitch. Fast pitch came before slow pitch. Fast pitch is heavily concentrated in Dakota, Wyoming, and Michigan.
	Making the rules of softball officially, greatly expanded the games popularity. There were 92,545 teams in the United States by 1936. The 1938 World Championship in Chicago hosted 56 men's and 34 women's teams for 43 different states. Interest continued to grow at a slow- pace through the 1960s, then exploded into widespread popularity during the 1970s and 1980s as fitness-conscious Americans discovered slow-pitch softball.
		Women's slow-pitch is a game of the American Heartland. Extremely high levels of play are found across the northern half of the West and and Midwest, with slightly lower levels continuing eastward into Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. A second core is found in the southern Great Plains, centering in Oklahoma, with somewhat lower levels of play in Texas and Arkansas. Alabama is the only state in the Southeast with substantial play. Most of the Northeast and the rest of the Southeast are below average.