I have never been a baseball fan untill the last couple of seasons when the Nats arrived in the DC area. But until a couple of months ago I have never seen so many broken bats. Sometimes it seems that a bat breaks once an inning. You usually don’t get to see the break for more than a second or two on TV, but it mostly seems to look like a long diagonal split as if the grain was not straight but runs out the side. I think the better bats are turned by hand on a lathe and one would think that the blanks would be chosen for straight grain, unless you were to be a real cynic and figure that they are creating a demand for more bats during these hard ecconomic times.
Wot is going on here?
Replies
Bats are lighter and have thinner handles than bats of yore, to make them handle more like the aluminum bats players grew up with. With a thin handle it is inevitable that there is a lot of grain runs out, even if the grain runs perfectly straight and centered. I also wonder if players are less conscious of always have label up, as you used to be taught in little league. .
Label up.
I never understood that label up thing. Does the turner somehow figure out the flaws in the grain structure and place the label or is it that a bat is always stronger with a certain grain orientation with regards to where it is being struck.
as you used to be taught in little league.
I was hardly ever home because I had to travel the world for my job.. I am NOT a big sports fan. I was untill I heard a coach in girls basketball tell my daughter to 'elbow' another girl so she could gain a point for the so called team.. The girls WERE a team.. The coach was not!
I and my wife never het her play on a 'so called' .. School 'sportrs team' again.. She was very good at basketball! I never wanted my little lady to be part of a stupid man that loved sports more than a little girl that would grow up to be a 'Lady'..
Another issue is that all wooden bats used to be made of ash. Many today are made from hard maple which lacks the resilience of ash and is more brittle. I use only wooden handled hammers and I wouldn't want a hammer handle made of hard maple.
I wonder if steroids make wooden bats weaker, the same way that donuts made my pants shrink.
Ray
steroids
You may have something there, The pitching is getting faster and 100mph is not all that unusual anymore. Add a steriod pumped up batter and you get higher forces on the bat.
I have found that if you don't drink beer with the donuts the pants don't shrink as fast so I separate the donuts in the morning from the beer in the afternoon. I'll have to test this out for quite a while to be sure. By the way the answer is not lite beer, don't even think of trying this.
There aren't any statistics to tell us if bats are breaking more frequently today than in the past. You can be sure the manufacturers are using the most carefully selected lumber, as they always have. The prefered species has changed. The bats that made Babe Ruth famous were made of hickory. In the quest to reduce weight, ash became popular. Barry Bonds started using maple and many players are now swinging maple bats. There is a difference in the nature of hickory compared to maple. Hickory and ash may start to break down and crack, where maple may just shatter. You also have to consider how fast the ball is thrown and how hard modern players can hit. The thin handles players prefer and the fact a pitcher won't throw across the center of the plate also contribute. Each hit ball can damage the bat. Back in the day, players could tap their bat handles on the plate and feel the tell tale vibration, indicating a crack. That may not be the case with maple.
I live within ear shot of a baseball field. The clink I hear from the aluminum bats just isn't right. Some say hitting with aluminum is much easier since they swing so fast. The major league rules state that the bat must be one piece of solid wood. Any other type of bat would have to be approved by the rules committee. That's not going to happen, it would mess up the statistics.
breaking more frequently today than in the past
When it comes to baseball I'm not a "back in the day" kinda guy. I spent almost seventy years NOT watching baseball, so when I think they are breaking more often now than in the past, the past is only a year or two old for me. Maybe it's just me. I just noticed that ball players seem to spit a lot too.
I just noticed that ball players seem to spit a lot too.
And they do not care about what the public see the real thing about them!
M C
Just had a thought. Could moisture content have anything to do with the strength of bats? There was a piece on the news the other day about a M L player keeping his bats in, what in essence was, a humidor. It was portable and he kept it in the dugout. I bet he kept his cigars in there too.
S,
I have been looking for a good use for Purpleheart. I wonder if it would make a good bat. How is it as kindling?
Mel
Mell.. Dang you on that about Purpleheart..
'I have been looking for a good use for Purpleheart'
It is a wonderful wood and a bit like Ash or Hickory to work with... But then again you have to like the color of it.. Sort of like picking out your new bride.. My wife was never purple and easy to work with...
I have used purpleheart for many things... It IS very strong and not that bad working with. It seems to love sunlight to bring out the color.. I use it alot for things I make.. I love how it's color seems to match almost any other wood I use with it...
I tried it for making a archery bow but it was not easy to 'tiller' See: http://www.archersadvantage.com/TipSheets/TillerTuning.htm
I have never tried to carve it, but I would think it would love to be a very large 'Bowl' carved out with a chain saw or other tools such as a Adz.. It will splinter or fracture on some grain. So you get-what-you-get from it....
And I would love to travel down the Amazon river in a canoe made of Purpleheart wood. Would it float? I wonder? I would think that the 'local people' would love to see my dream boat....
Now if I could only find some Yellowheart wood to mate it with!
Before my son left home for the last time he got a bunch of purpleheart and spanish cedar and was going to make his fortune building cigar humidors. I sprung for a big Incra Jig system so he could knock out beautiful double dovetails and such. You know, the dovetails within dovetails that make them outlined in contrasting wood etc. Well, he is long gone with two kids of his own and I just found some of the purpleheart he left behind and I don't know what to do with it either. I have heard that with age it turns brown, is that true? No humidors were ever made as far as I can tell.
bat grain/labels
The labels are put on the flat part of the grain. If you keep the label up and swing level, the ball will hit on the edge of the grain, where the wood is strongest. This is why the little leaguers were taught to hit with the label up - cost of bats.
Pro ball players felt (feel) that the bat is springier, giving more distance, if you hit on the flat of the grain. This leads to more fractures if the ball does not strike the node point of the bat (sweet spot). This contributes to the higher frequency of broken bats more (in my opinion) than thinner handles and different woods.
I'm going with the more maple and less,...hickory theory. Larry says ash, but somebody else points outs that in the old days they were made out of hickory. THAT's the wood they should be using still today. It grows like a weed in many parts of the south and east and it is more springy, more shock resistant than the other two, yet still just as dense and strong. I guess the tradeoff is weight.
S,
Great story about the Incra jig and the purpleheart! Did your son ever use the jig to make the double dovetails?
About purpleheart. I have heard that it turns brown with age - actually with exposure to the sun. My only experience with it was in taking an 8"x*8x3" piece and carving it into a rectangular bowl. That was a few years ago, and it still looks purple..
At the Woodcraft store, I have become aware of woods that I had never heard of. It turns out that there is not only purpleheart, but also orangeheart, yellowheart, redheart and maybe a few other hearts -- at least, that is what the labels say. I pretty much stick to figured maple and walnut and cherry and oak and such.
Have fun.
Mel
Did your son ever use the jig ?
Nope. I'm not even sure if he watched the DVD that came with it. I did, and was convinced that the easy as pie demonstration of how to use it was a big lie. It came with a huge library of templates. I clamped it onto my largest router table and it sits there today, a very accurate fence that I can move way back out of the way when I have to, yet slide into position and perfectly repeat a cut when I have to redo something. I think I used it to cut finger joints or something before he left. In fact I think I did it on some of his purpleheart to get him to try it. Don't get me wrong. My son is great. He is very good at the many things he does, but this kinda fell thru the cracks. He had a good friend who was a woodworker (as well as me) and I think he (and I) got carried away by the idea.
I'm not sure if double dovetails are the outlined ones or the ones that are in essence all pins, that can not ever be pulled open. Betcha never did one of those. This is not a joke. You will fall over an amazement when you learn how to do that.
S,
I have never had the Incra jig, although I did drool over it back in the days when I thought about electrically powered routers, and I did read about how to make those double dovetails, but it has been a long time, and I have forgotten. Now I want to learn how to make all of the handmade joints that Kintaro Yazawa makes. But if I an figure out how to design router bits to make them, I might go into production. :-)
I think we ALL have some tools that we bought with the best of intentions, but have not used yet. I remember one night when I thought I needed a set of gimlets. Heck, now that I think of them, I may go downstairs and drill a few holes with the gimlets.
Have fun.
Mel
just guessing
Just guessing, but maybe it's a result of improper storage. Everybody knows that bats sleep upside down, hanging from the ceiling. If they store the bats in a bin, they may just be tired when they get to the field, and don't have the usual resilience. ;-)
Charles Schultz - Peanuts
They were playing baseball, and it was Lucy's turn at bat. Charlie Brown told her, "Remember to keep the label up, so you don't crack the bat."
Lucy held the bat, focused her gaze on the label--and stood completely still as the balls whizzed by. Strike one. Strike two. Strike three.
"You were right, Charlie Brown," she said as headed for the bench. "I kept the label up, and the bat didn't crack."
Bats
There is actually quite of bit on ongoing research into the broken bat situation. The USDA Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin has been addressing this for the last several years at the request of Major League Baseball. The Milwaukee Brewers has been independently working with a researcher that was formerly with the FPL to develop better bats. Here is a link to some of the explanations to this issue.
http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/products/publications/specific_pub.php?posting_id=17981
John
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