The International Softball World Championships in nineteen sixty-five developed women's softball by making it an international game, a step towards the Pan-American Games and the Olympics. 11 years later, women softball players were given the closest equivalent to Major League Baseball with the 1976 formation of the International Women's Professional Softball League. Player contracts ranged from $1,000 to $3,000 per year, but the league disbanded in 1980 because of financial problems. The popularity of women's fastpitch softball has grown steadily since the professional league's end in 1980. In fact, once again, there is another professional fastpitch league called the NPF (National Pro Fastpitch League). The Amateur Softball Association reports that it "annually registers over 260,000 teams that combined form a membership of more than 4.5 million" (About the ASA).

These numbers do not all apply to fastpitch, yet it is consistently growing along with slowpitch. All over America hundreds of leagues and thousands of players enthusiastically accepted this major team game and Softball became one of America's most loved sports.