Softball Scoreboard

Both codes play seven innings, and both fill the same line score, but almost everything between the pitches differs. Fastpitch is nine fielders, a flat hard pitch, stealing, bunting and a slap game. Slowpitch is ten fielders — the extra one is a rover or short fielder behind the infield — and the pitch must arc between six and twelve feet, which is why there is no stealing and no bunting: runners have to stay on the base until the ball is hit.

That difference shows up on the board. A fastpitch game turns over quickly and the count matters; a slowpitch game often starts batters with a count already on them and is capped by a time limit rather than by innings, so the half-inning buttons get more use than the ball and strike buttons.

• Fastpitch: 9 fielders, stealing and bunting allowed, 7 innings, pitching rubber 43 ft in NCAA and most high school play.
• Slowpitch: 10 fielders, pitch arc 6–12 ft, no stealing, no bunting, 7 innings or a time limit, whichever comes first.
• Both: the visiting team bats in the top half of each inning, three outs end a half-inning, and R, H and E are totalled the same way.

Softball ends lopsided games early far more often than baseball does. In NCAA softball a game is over when a team leads by eight or more runs after five complete innings — if the home team is ahead by eight coming to bat in the bottom of the fifth, the game simply ends there. Youth softball usually stacks several thresholds so that a blowout can end even sooner.

This board never ends a game for you: the run-rule note is a reminder printed under the score, and you decide when the game is over. Mark it final in the settings and the board shows FINAL.

Ties are broken with the international tiebreaker: every half-inning of extra innings starts with a runner already on second base, and that runner is the player who was due to bat last in the previous inning — in practice, the batter ahead of the leadoff hitter. The WBSC uses it from the eighth inning, and many conferences and tournaments do the same in the regular season, while NCAA championship play just keeps playing. On this board, flip to the extra inning and tap the second-base button before the first pitch.

Softball pitchers are not limited the way Little League baseball pitchers are. Little League Softball counts innings pitched, not pitches: a pitcher may work up to twelve innings in a day, and seven or more innings in one day require a calendar day of rest. USA Softball leaves pitching limits to the local league for most divisions.

So there is no pitch counter on this board. If your league does cap pitches, keep that count on paper or on a tally counter — the scoreboard is for the score, the count and the bases, and mixing a pitch count into the balls-and-strikes display is the fastest way to lose track of both.

• Runs per inning for both teams over seven columns, with more columns appended for extra innings, plus the R, H and E totals.
• Balls, strikes and outs as dots, with the automatic resets at four balls, three strikes and three outs.
• First, second and third base as tap targets — useful for the tiebreaker runner and for slowpitch, where runners can only move on a batted ball.
• A free-text run-rule note under the board and a FINAL marker, so everyone watching knows why a game stopped after five.
• Full-screen display mode for a TV or projector, undo for the last taps, and a live view link that needs no account to open.