One of my favorite jokes is about a guy who goes to prison for the first time. As he’s being walked to his cell by a guard he hears a prisoner yell “43!”, which is followed by howls of laughter from the rest of the population.

About 20 seconds later someone else yells out “17!” and again there is laughter. After a couple more numbers are called out the new guy asks his escort what that’s all about.

“A lot of our population has been here a long time and has heard the same jokes over and over,” the guard explains. “To save time, each joke has now been assigned a number. Someone yells the number and the rest react to the joke.”

“Hmmm,” the new guy says to himself, “seems like a good way to try to fit it on day one.” So he takes a deep breath and calls out “26!”, which is followed by silence.

“What happened?” he asks the guard. “Why didn’t anyone laugh?”

To which the guard replies sadly, “I guess some people just don’t know how to tell a joke.”

The same can be said for pitch calling in fastpitch softball. While it might seem straightforward, especially with all the data and charts and documentation available (including this one from me), it’s actually not quite that simple.

The fact is pitch calling is as much art and feel as it is science and data, and like the newbie prisoner trying to fit in, some people have a natural knack for it and some don’t.

That can be a problem because nothing can take down a good or even great pitcher faster than a poor pitch caller.

Here’s an example. There are coaches all over the fastpitch world who apparently believe that pitch speed is everything. As a result, they don’t like to (and in some cases refuse to) call changeups because they believe the only way to get hitters out is to blow the ball by them.

But the reality is even a changeup that’s only fair, or doesn’t get thrown reliably enough for a strike, can still be effective – as long as it’s setting up the next pitch. And if that changeup is a strong one, it can do more to get hitters out than a steady diet of speed. Just ask NiJaree Canady, who can throw 73 mph+ through an entire game but instead leaned heavily on her changeup during the 2024 Women’s College World Series.

The reality is the ability to change speeds, even if it’s going from slow to slower, will be a lot more effective in most cases than having the pitcher throw every pitch at the same speed no matter how fast she is. Sooner or later good hitters will latch onto that speed and the hits will start coming.

There’s also the problem of coaches falling into pitch calling patterns. Remember that great change we were just talking about?

If you’re calling that pitch on every hitter and hitters are having trouble hitting your pitcher’s speed, the hitters can just sit on the changeup and not worry about the rest. It gets even worse if you’re calling a particular pitch on the same count all the time.

A truly great pitch caller is one who can look at a hitter and just feel her weaknesses. That great pitch caller can also see what the last pitch did to the hitter and call the next pitch to throw that hitter off even more.

I’ve watched it happen. When my younger daughter Kim was playing high school ball she had an assistant coach who was a great pitch caller.

She was never overpowering, but she could spot and spin the ball. The coach calling pitches knew her capabilities, and when they went up against a local powerhouse team that had been killing her high school the last few years he used those capabilities to best advantage.

The team lost 2-1, due to errors I might add, but that was a lot better than the 12-1 drubbings they were used to. The coach called pitches to keep the opposing hitters guessing and off-balance all game, Kim executed them beautifully, and they almost pulled off the upset.

The coach didn’t have a big book of tendencies, by the way. He just knew how to take whatever his pitchers had and use it most effectively.

And I guess that’s the last point I want to make. All too often pitch callers think pitchers need to have all these different pitches to be effective.

While that can help, a great pitch caller works with whatever he/she has. If the pitcher only has a fastball and a change, the pitch caller will move the ball around the zone and change speeds seemingly at random.

The hitter can never get comfortable because it’s difficult to cover the entire strike zone effectively.

Add in a drop ball that looks like a fastball coming in and you have a lot to work with. In fact, for some pitch callers that’s about all they can really handle; throw in more pitches and they’re likely not going to understand how to combine them effectively to get hitters out.

Some people have the ability to call pitches natively. They just understand it at the molecular level.

For the rest, it’s a skill that can be learned but you have to put in the time and effort to get good at it, just like the pitchers do to learn the pitches.

Watch games and see how top teams are calling pitches. Track what they’re throwing when – and why.

Look at the hitters, they way they swing the bat, the way they warm up in the on-deck circle, the way they walk, the way they stand, the way they more. All of those parameters will give you clues as to which pitches will work on them.

Then, make sure you understand how they work together for each pitcher. For example, maybe pitcher A doesn’t have a great changeup she can throw for a low strike, but the change of speed or elevation may be just enough to make a high fastball harder to hit on the next pitch.

Your pitchers aren’t robots, they are flesh and blood people. So are the hitters. If you understand what you want to throw and why in each situation you’ll be on your way to becoming a legend as a pitch caller – and a coach your pitchers trust to help them through good times and bad.