Andrew C. Dix
Associate Professor of Communication Studies
Middle Tennessee State University
Suggested Citation:
Dix, A. C. (2024). Softball is not separate of visual rhetoric: Applying the theoretical perspective on visual rhetoric to umpire observations in Division II softball. Utah Journal of Communication, 2(2), 49-54. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13905057
Abstract
This study focused on the visual rhetoric associated with pitched balls in softball games that featured historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and predominantly White institutions (PWIs) in the sport of Division II women’s college softball. Context was established in the study introduction via referencing previous HBCU sports communication research. Study objectives and the justifications for this research were then presented. The theoretical perspective on visual rhetoric guided this scholarship and the extant literature on referee bias was unpacked within the review of related literature. Using publicly available data, quantitative analyses were conducted to determine if statistical differences existed between HBCUs and PWIs on the criterion of walks (BB) allowed. Findings indicated that a statistically significant number of walks per inning were granted by the umpire when the student-athlete was an HBCU softball pitcher. That is, Division II softball umpires called more walks if the pitcher was from an HBCU and a lessened number of walks if the pitcher was from a PWI. Theoretical implications were subsequently highlighted in the study discussion. Interpretations of these Division II softball findings were then presented and avenues for future sports communication research were also identified.
Keywords: Sports communication, Historically Black colleges and universities, HBCU, Visual rhetoric, Referee bias, Softball
The field of visual communication has been a focal point for communication scholars for decades. As such, rhetoricians have repeatedly made the call for a theory on visual rhetoric. As Scott (1994) notably proclaimed in her classic piece of scholarship: “the research program for visual rhetoric should investigate how images are produced, used, and interpreted in consumer culture. Therefore, developing and testing a theory of visual rhetoric would have applications across paradigms” (p. 268). Indeed, the push for more attention being devoted to visual rhetoric has yielded considerable output including the emergence of the theoretical perspective on visual rhetoric by Foss (2005) as well as the emergence of the rhetorical sub-genre of body rhetoric. One niche in which body rhetoric is particularly applicable involves the field of sports communication. Specifically, the sport of softball requires catchers to engage in body rhetoric in order to frame a pitch as a strike within the eyes of the umpire. While it is important to consider the nonverbal act of pitch framing as well as how the visual image of a pitched ball appears to an umpire, it is also necessary to consider cultural variables and the context for this sports communication study.
The context for this scholarship is established by documenting previous sports communication literature which is culturally-centric. The extant research on sports communication has utilized expectancy violations theory as a frame for revealing that referees called more ball-handling errors (BHEs) against HBCU women’s college volleyball teams relative to PWI women’s college volleyball teams (Dix, 2023). Similar sports communication literature has found that referees called more personal fouls against HBCU women’s college basketball teams relative to PWI women’s college basketball teams for nonverbal behaviors like shoving, pushing, and holding in both Division I (Dix, 2019) and Division II (Dix, 2020a). Perhaps most applicable to the current research was a sports communication study which revealed that home plate umpires called more walks when the baseball pitcher was from an HBCU as opposed to a PWI (Dix, 2020b). Taken together, these sports communication studies provide important context for this investigation.
There were several justifications for this study. First, this research seeks to extend the theoretical perspective on visual rhetoric to the sport of Division II college softball. Umpires place judgments on the visual image they observe from behind the plate when a ball is pitched. Catchers, who receive the pitched ball, have the ability to influence umpire evaluations via their body rhetoric. Specifically, the body rhetoric act of pitch framing is an effort made by the catcher to make a pitched ball appear to be of quality within the eyes of the umpire. The intersection where the body rhetoric act of pitch framing conjoins with the visual image that is conjured in the eyes of the message receiving umpire are important to contemplate because they can influence game outcomes. This has not been previously studied within the lens of the theoretical perspective on visual rhetoric. Therefore, this research has potential implications for theory. Second, this research seeks to fill a gap in the gendered sports literature. Many studies on umpire decision-making have been conducted on men’s professional baseball. However, women’s softball has not been sufficiently investigated. This research seeks to fill that gap by producing original research on female student-athletes. Furthermore, this study can also yield insight on the lesser researched space of Division II sports, build on previous sports literature devoted to nonverbal communication, and better inform intercollegiate practitioners of sport.
The objective of this scholarship is to explore visual rhetoric in Division II women’s softball on a conference level. It is within the review of related literature that the referee bias literature on women’s sports is summarized and communication theory is addressed. Quantitative methods are discussed within the methodology. The results are then presented on a conference level to parcel out differences between Division II HBCU conferences and Division II PWI conferences. Interpreting the results and providing new theoretical knowledge are the focal points for the study discussion.
Literature Review
The theoretical perspective on visual rhetoric by Foss (2005) framed this research. Per the theoretical underpinnings proposed by Foss (2005), three characteristics must be present in order to qualify as visual rhetoric. First, Foss (2005) proposed that a visual image must involve symbolic action. As Foss (2005) noted: “in the simplest sense, a sign communicates when it is connected to another object, as the changing of the leaves in autumn is connected to a change in temperature” (p. 144). Akin to this example, a catcher using body rhetoric to favorably frame a pitched ball communicates a visual image to the home plate umpire. Second, Foss (2005) proposed that human intervention was a required theoretical underpinning. Per Foss (2005): “visual rhetoric involves human action of some kind” (p. 144). For instance, a softball catcher engages in the human body rhetorical action of moving the glove to a specific place to catch and/or make a pitched softball look favorable. Third, Foss (2005) argued that the presence of an audience must exist in order to constitute visual rhetoric. In softball, the umpires who judge the quality of a pitched ball are representative of an audience. Collectively, these underpinnings illustrate that visual rhetoric can be tested in this study, but it is also appropriate to consider the referee bias literature.
Previous academic research has found that baseball umpires often misjudge the quality of a pitched ball. Scholarship by Tainsky et al. (2015) explored pitched balls in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1997 through 2008. Their research revealed the highest percentage of called strikes occurred when the pitcher was White with a lessened percentage of strike pitches being called for Hispanic and Black pitchers (Tainsky et al., 2015). Research by Hamrick and Rasp (2015) looked at over seven million MLB pitches over the course of the 1989 season through the 2010 season. Findings from Hamrick and Rasp (2015) unearthed evidence that: “racial bias does play a role in pitch calling” (p. 732) but the effect size was small. The MLB analyses of Parsons et al. (2011) centered on the 2004 season through the 2008 season. They reported: “when the umpire matches the pitcher’s race/ethnicity, the rate of called strikes rises by one-half percent above the rate when there is no match” (Parsons et al., 2011, p. 1,418). Kim and King (2014) looked at the 2008 and the 2009 season for MLB. One of their main findings was that White pitchers who were perceived to have a good reputation received more favorable calls on borderline pitches in comparison to Black pitchers who were perceived to have a good reputation (Kim & King, 2014). Although these studies put forth evidence that cultural variables have the ability to influence how umpires evaluate a pitched ball in certain contexts, the previous literature on women’s sports should also be addressed.
The existing literature devoted to referee bias in women’s sports is minimal albeit eclectic. Studies have found that referees awarded advantageous calls to home teams in the sport of women’s water polo in Spain (Prieto et al., 2013), revealed that referees gave favorable calls to the home team in women’s volleyball games in Italy and Brazil (Campos et al., 2014), reported that away teams in the women’s professional soccer league in Sweden received less yellow cards during the COVID-19 pandemic in circumstances where the fans were not present (Krumer & Smith, 2022), uncovered evidence of a referee bias which favored foreign players (who were not Black) in a professional Spanish women’s basketball league (Gomez-Gonzalez et al., 2020), and found an increase in the number of yellow cards that were sanctioned to the home team in English women’s soccer games when spectators were not present during the COVID-19 pandemic (Szabó & Kerényi, 2023). Taken together, these women’s sports studies suggest referee bias has occurred in several sports and in different places.
The Current Research
This research explored the visual rhetoric that umpires reacted to in the form of a pitched ball. A pitch is called a ball by the umpire if it is deemed unhittable. Four pitches that are deemed unhittable in one at bat yield a walk (or free base) to the batter. A pitch is called a strike by the umpire if the pitch is deemed to be hittable and the batter does not swing. There are nine innings in one game. It is at the Division II level that two conferences are the HBCU conferences. The Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) is a southern-based conference which is comprised entirely of HBCUs. The lone exception in the SIAC is the PWI of Spring Hill College. The other HBCU conference in Division II is the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) which is based on the east coast. Every current member of the CIAA is an HBCU. The only PWI which competed in the CIAA was Chowan University which left the CIAA in 2019. Since Spring Hill College and Chowan University are PWIs, they were removed from the current analyses. Therefore, a total of 24 HBCU teams were conference members of the SIAC or the CIAA at the conclusion of the 2022-2023 season.
The extant literature reveals that referee bias is common. Evidence of referee bias in pitch calling has been uncovered in previous MLB research (see Hamrick & Rasp, 2015; Kim & King, 2014; Parsons et al., 2011; Tainsky et al., 2015). Scholarship dedicated to women’s sports has also uncovered multiple instances of referee bias (see Campos et al., 2014; Gomez-Gonzalez et al., 2020; Krumer & Smith, 2022; Prieto et al., 2013; Szabó & Kerényi, 2023). Sports communication research has revealed that HBCU women’s teams have been disproportionately penalized by referees relative to PWI women’s teams (see Dix, 2019, 2020a, 2020b, 2023). When taken together, the existing literature gives reason to present these hypotheses:
H1: The audience that is softball umpires in Division II will award a statistically significant number of walks allowed per inning when the symbolic action of a pitched ball is completed by an HBCU pitcher in the SIAC from the 2016-2017 season through the 2018-2019 season and from the 2020-2021 season through the 2022-2023 season.
H2: The audience that is softball umpires in Division II will award a statistically significant number of walks allowed per inning when the symbolic action of a pitched ball is completed by an HBCU pitcher in the CIAA from the 2016-2017 season through the 2018-2019 season and from the 2020-2021 season through the 2022-2023 season.
Methodology
This research utilized publicly available data from Division II women’s college softball games, focusing on the criterion of walks (BB) allowed. Data from seven seasons were available, but the 2019-2020 season was excluded due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cut the season short. As a result, the analysis covered six seasons: 2016-2017 through 2018-2019 and 2020-2021 through 2022-2023. The data were imported into SPSS for analysis, where z-scores were calculated to determine how individual mean scores compared to the overall population in terms of standard deviations. This method was appropriate for assessing how conferences compared to the population mean. Z-score calculations also revealed the probability values for each conference, identifying statistically significant results. Given the one-tailed hypotheses, the critical value for z-scores was above 1.645 or below -1.645. Standard deviations were also computed, and these analyses laid the foundation for interpreting the study’s results.
Results
Hypothesis one proposed that the audience of softball umpires in Division II would award a statistically significant number of walks allowed per inning when the symbolic action of a pitched ball was completed by an HBCU pitcher in the SIAC from the 2016-2017 season through the 2018-2019 season and from the 2020-2021 season through the 2022-2023 season.
Support was found for the first study hypothesis based on the z-score analysis that was completed. Division II softball umpires awarded an average of 0.55783 walks per inning when the pitcher was from the HBCU conference of the SIAC, which was statistically significant (M = 0.55783; zpenalties = 2.94291; p = .001626). It was over these six years that the highest average number of walks allowed per inning occurred when the pitcher was from the HBCU conference of the SIAC. None of the other 22 Division II softball conferences had a higher average number of walks allowed per inning than the SIAC. In connection to communication theory, the rhetorical audience of umpires evaluated the visual rhetoric associated with a pitched ball at a level that was significantly different and unfavorable when a team in the HBCU conference of the SIAC was pitching.
Hypothesis two proposed that the audience of softball umpires in Division II would award a statistically significant number of walks allowed per inning when the symbolic action of a pitched ball was completed by an HBCU pitcher in the CIAA from the 2016-2017 season through the 2018-2019 season and from the 2020-2021 season through the 2022-2023 season.
Support was also found for the second study hypothesis based on the z-score analysis that was completed. Division II softball umpires awarded an average of 0.52797 walks allowed per inning when the pitcher was from the HBCU conference of the CIAA, which was statistically significant (M = 0.52797; zpenalties = 2.4190; p = .008). It was over these six years of analysis that the second highest average number of walks allowed per inning occurred when the pitcher was from the HBCU conference of the CIAA. None of the 21 PWI conferences in Division II softball had a higher average number of walks allowed per inning than the CIAA. In connection to communication theory, the rhetorical audience of umpires evaluated the visual rhetoric associated with a pitched ball at a level that was significantly different and unfavorable when a team in the HBCU conference of the CIAA was pitching.
Supplemental Results
There were supplemental findings that should be noted. First, not a single PWI conference allowed a statistically significant number of walks allowed per inning. Second, an independent samples t-test was completed on walks allowed per inning for every HBCU in the entire country (e.g., SIAC HBCUs, CIAA HBCUs, and all HBCUs across the country that are not in the SIAC or the CIAA). Statistically significant results emerged between all of the HBCU Division II softball teams across the country (M = 0.5138, SD = 0.11) relative to all of the PWI Division II softball teams across the country (M = 0.3817, SD = 0.07) in this analysis (t (242) = 6.304, p < .001). All things considered, a number of differences were uncovered in this research.
Discussion
This scholarship revealed that umpires awarded a statistically significant number of walks per inning when the Division II softball pitcher was from an HBCU conference. Individual team data from across the country revealed that all HBCUs were perceived differently than all PWIs across the country. The discussion section which follows offers interpretations and correlations back to previous literature.
One interpretation of the uncovered results is connected to the MLB referee bias literature. The finding that statistically more walks per inning were called when the Division II softball pitcher was from an HBCU conference relative to a PWI conference falls in line with previous MLB scholarship which has found that racial factors can impact how a pitch is called by an umpire in certain contexts (see Hamrick & Rasp, 2015; Kim & King, 2014; Parsons et al., 2011; Tainsky et al., 2015). The results of this study become more supportive of those MLB referee bias studies which claimed racial factors could influence how a pitch is called by an umpire when the demographics of student-athletes are considered. It was during the six analyzed seasons that 66.7% of Division II softball players at HBCUs identified as Black, 21.8% of Division II softball players at HBCUs identified as White, and 11.5% identified as other. In contrast, for non-HBCU Division II softball teams, a total of 77.1% of female student-athletes identified as White, 2.3% identified as Black, while 20.6% identified as other (NCAA Diversity Data, 2023). Stated differently, the results from this research suggest it is possible that racial factors may have potentially impacted how a pitch was called by some Division II softball umpires in some contexts.
A second finding to note is that the uncovered results correspond with the previous sports communication literature devoted to HBCU referee bias in women’s sports. Specifically, these findings corroborate with the findings of Dix (2023) who found that volleyball referees called more BHEs per set against Division I HBCU women’s college volleyball teams relative to Division I PWI women’s college volleyball teams, corroborate with Dix (2024) who revealed that referees called an inflated number of fouls against the only HBCU women’s college basketball team which competed in a conference that was otherwise comprised of only PWI women’s college basketball teams, and corroborate with the research of Dix who uncovered evidence that referees called more personal fouls against HBCU women’s college basketball teams in comparison to PWI women’s college basketball teams at a level that was statistically significant in Division I (Dix, 2019) and Division II (Dix, 2020a). Collectively, the study findings are not surprising as they align with previous sports communication scholarship that has uncovered other instances of HBCU referee bias in women’s sports.
A third finding to unpack centers on reasons why umpires evaluated ball pitches differently for HBCUs. It is possible these pitches were called differently by the rhetorical audience of umpires because Division II HBCU softball teams were just in fact throwing more ball pitches relative to Division II PWIs. Perhaps HBCUs have less talented pitchers who were simply throwing more ball pitches and less strike pitches. However, this explanation is shaky because no conferences of a similar ilk in terms of talent level (e.g., similar non-power conferences such as the Conference Carolinas, Gulf South, Lone Star, etc.) were called for a walks allowed per inning rate that was statistically significant. In fact, the HBCU conferences of the SIAC and CIAA were moderately above any other conference in terms of walks allowed per inning. It is possible that Division II HBCU softball pitchers were throwing more ball pitches, but the results can also be explained via the notion that referee bias is not uncommon. As noted, many studies have put forth evidence that referee bias often occurs. That can partially explain the findings as well. It is difficult to propose a single definitive explanation on why the study results emerged based on the nature of the analyzed data, but it is likely that many factors played a role when it comes to the rhetorical audience of umpires evaluating the pitches of these Division II HBCU softball teams less favorably than Division II PWI softball teams.
A fourth finding to unpack concentrates on implications for communication theory. This study extends the theoretical perspective on visual rhetoric to the Division II softball fields because it illustrates that visual rhetoric is evaluated differently by umpires in certain contexts. Specifically, the visual rhetoric associated with pitched balls from HBCUs were adversely evaluated by umpires in comparison to pitched balls from PWIs at a statistically significant level. By testing the theoretical perspective on visual rhetoric characteristics of (a) symbolic action, (b) human intervention, and (c) the presence of an audience, this scholarship reveals that the visual rhetoric of ball pitches are somewhat subjective in the Division II softball fields. As alluded to previously, it is possible that statistically significant differences were uncovered because HBCUs were in fact pitching more balls than strikes. That is certainly a possibility. However, this study sought to illuminate that elements of visual rhetoric were present in softball, could be empirically tested, and revealed that differences were visually perceived by the rhetorical audience of softball umpires.
Limitations and Future Research
There were limitations in this study and there are some areas to research in the future. A noticeable limitation was that demographic information on the umpires was not publicly available. Knowing the gender identity and race of these umpires would have facilitated more advanced statistical testing. Another limitation was the data on home games and fan attendance were not available for every team. Having access to this information could have supported (or perhaps challenged) previous research which has analyzed the intersection of referee bias and fan presence. Future scholarship at the intercollegiate level should look at whether playing at home is correlated with advantageous calls on borderline pitches in Division II and Division I softball. As technology in softball continues to advance, studying features such as the automated ball-strike (ABS) system would also be beneficial. Comparing pitch data from the ABS system in Division II softball against how the umpire on the field actually called the pitch could provide insight on whether the criterion of walks (BB) were correctly called by the umpire or whether there was an umpire error (E).
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