Anyone who’s ever sampled ESPN sports programming has occasionally caught snatches of women’s college softball. Until recently, though, I might only watch an inning or two before flipping to something else.  Frankly, the game didn’t grab me with its short field dimensions, visually unappealing all-dirt infields, and the often-dominating performances of its elite pitchers.

Then last week I decided to give the telecasts a fair shot, to hang in for a few innings and see if I felt differently after watching a representative slice of the women’s College World Series championship. Next thing you know I was hooked, and for several days dutifully checked in to follow the unfolding drama as the University of Michigan won its first NCAA title by beating two-time defending champion and perennial power UCLA. Other viewers did the same, judging from ESPN's excellent ratings.

The decisive game – the third of a best-of-three series – was won in the 10th inning (regulation games are seven innings) with a three-run homer. That was a nice payoff to my viewing investment, but it doesn’t begin to explain why I became a fan. Before going further, I should explain I was in Columbus, Ga., in 1996 when the US women’s team won the first gold medal ever awarded for Olympics softball. That was exciting, but watching this past week’s telecasts demonstrated to me how much television can enhance a sport like softball.

ESPN, of course, was using lots of cameras at the Amateur Softball Association's Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City, and, not surprisingly, they were used very effectively to draw viewers into the games and the atmosphere surrounding them. In particular, the cable channel provided countless close-ups of the faces of players, coaches, and fans.

The strategy is hardly new – TV producers have feasted on it to dramatize postseason major-league baseball games for years. Women’s college softball, however, has some interesting TV advantages. For one, the players, especially those in the dugout, are highly expressive and enthusiastic, doing cheers, choreographed hand slaps, and the like, and because caps are optional in women’s softball, TV viewers get a good, unobscured look at each face. The same is true of the fans, many of whom are friends and relatives of the players and put on quite a show of their own.

It also should be noted that the players, despite a burning desire to win, haven’t lost the ability to enjoy themselves. Even at the most crucial times their smiles uncontrollably surface, a welcome contrast to the intense seriousness that characterizes so much of men’s high-level sports.

Any athlete, of course, is capable of gleefully celebrating an individual achievement or team victory, the difference is the women seem to enjoy the very act of playing of the game more. And that makes for great television.

Having said all this, I still wonder if women’s fast-pitch softball is too dominated by ace pitchers. In the championship series, played on successive days, the same two pitchers started and finished every game – Michigan junior Jennie Ritter and UCLA freshman Anjelica Selden. They’ll be back next year, and have a decent chance of guiding their teams to the finals of the eight-team World Series again.

While the skill of such superlative pitchers is impressive and fun to watch, up to a point, it creates an imbalance that isn’t necessarily in the sport’s best long-term interests.

There’s even some talk that softball’s place in the Olympics could be in jeopardy. The strike against it, some believe, is that the US team is too overpowering, that there’s too big a talent gap with the rest of the world. Yes, the American squad did crush the opposition last summer in Athens, when it won its third straight gold and outscored the opposition 51-1 while winning all seven of its games.

What people forget, though, is that the Americans lost three games in Sydney in 2000 and realized they needed to raise their game to stay on top. (It’s hard to ignore, by the way, the parallels between the women’s softball superiority and that of the US men’s Olympic basketball, which no one could touch for decades. Last year, it was relegated to the bronze.)

Women’s softball is assured a spot at the Beijing Games in 2008, but after that the International Olympic Committee will be reviewing what sports to keep in 2012. At this point it doesn’t look like New York will be the host city, so there are no guarantees that softball will maintain its place on the Olympic program.

If I had my druthers, I’d move the pitching distance in the women’s game back three more feet, from it current distance of 43 to 46, as used by the men. It’s a modest change, to be sure, but it could be just enough to inject more hitting into the game, which would create more excitement and make sure that the other players in the field see sufficient action.

As it is, women’s college softball has to be looking over its shoulder at hard-charging women’s lacrosse, which is beginning to challenge softball’s popularity on some college campuses.

Certainly Michigan’s victory is one encouraging sign that softball is enlarging its geographic turf. The Wolverines are the first team east of the Mississippi to win the NCAA championship, and while a handful of Californians are on the roster, more than half the players hail from the Midwest, including Ritter and Samantha Findlay, who belted the series-clinching homer.

Women’s softball has every reason to feel good about the gains it’s made. Now it just needs to make sure even more people tune in to next year’s World Series.

Touching other bases

• If baseball wants to let managers and players argue with the umpires, so be it. But couldn’t Major League Baseball do something to cut down on the tantrums thrown in dugouts, especially by pitchers who hurl and kick equipment or other objects in anger after being lifted? Instead of letting them fling bats or bash water coolers, why not put a padded wall in the corner of the dugout? Anybody who wants to vent their frustration could take it out there, an idea just silly enough perhaps to foster more self-control.

• In the future, authors who write sports histories are going to be hard pressed to establish a sense of place. With arena and stadium names changing all the time, how will readers know if San Francisco’s SBC Park, for example, is one and the same as Pac Bell Park (which it is)? It won’t be like referring to games played in Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field or New York’s Madison Square Garden, where a consistent identity is a plus in establishing the heritage and character of a venue.

• Well-traveled quarterback Doug Flutie could be a nice addition to the offensive brain trust of the New England Patriots. The Patriots, of course, are hoping that Super Bowl MVP Tom Brady will play every down. But with highly regarded offensive coordinator Charlie Weis having moved on to coach Notre Dame, the Patriots could use Flutie’s thinking during timeout strategy sessions. Unlike some backups who might grow restless on the bench, Flutie is more likely to accept his role and be satisfied to finish out his 19-year career in his native New England, where he won the 1984 Heisman Trophy while playing at Boston College.

• If you can name the winningest men’s college basketball team of the 1930s, you get three points, plus the ball out of bounds as a bonus. Who ranked ahead of Kentucky, St. John’s, Kansas, and Syracuse with a decade-long .893 winning percentage? The Long Island University Blackbirds.

• The NCAA has licensed 28 bowl games for the 2005-06 college football season and only three don't have name sponsors: the Rose Bowl, Motor City Bowl (in Detroit), and Independence Bowl (in Shreveport, La.).

• I didn’t know that golfers Annika Sorenstam and Tiger Woods were buddies and neighbors in the same Florida golf community, which is a nice thing for Tiger’s wife, Elin Nordegren. She and Sorenstam are fellow Swedes.