Baseball bats - Ash vs. Maple?

[Steve Turner]

What do you guys make of this new-found love for maple bats instead of traditional ash? It seems there's a huge problem with the maple bats exploding and becoming dangerous projectiles:

isn't completely different than my experience with maple drum sticks; unless the sticks are made from absolutely STRAIGHT grain that runs from one end of the stick to the other, you can almost bet the sucker is going to pop in half. I don't use 'em; strictly hickory for me.

From the pictures in that article it appears to me that the bat in question was NOT constructed from straight grain lumber. Don't you think somebody in the bat making industry would have noticed this by now and made it a selling point and part of their quality control? Or do you think those suckers would explode regardless of grain direction?

[dpb]

Don't think there's any "love" associated w/ it at all--suitable ash has become hard to find (thereby read "expensive") is what I've heard. Don't think there's anything more to it than that.

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[Scott Lurndal]

I take it you don't play baseball. Maple bats have different hitting characteristics, preferred by many players.

Most major league bats are custom made for the player.

scott

[keithw86]

They pay the guys a $M a year and can't afford a couple of bucks more for a bat? If Ash is so expensive, why not Hickory?

[sam]

Although hickory was used at the beginning of the 20th century, hitters today prefer lighter bats. The maple bats came into vogue because hitters like Barry Bonds put up good numbers with them, but they often break in dangerous ways. I do not think cost is a factor at all for major league hitters.

s

[CW]

Yes and we all know that MLB players have to watch their money as they don't make very much. :) If suitable ash is hard to find, someone forgot to tell the baseball bat manufacturers who turn them out by the million. Mable is just the latest "fad".

[-MIKE-]

Same with me. I tried maple stick but they gave no warning, they just snap in half. Most often, Hickory and Oak start to splinter and weaken and you can feel it in your hands, which gives you plenty of warning to switch sticks.

[-MIKE-]

The maple bats may be lighter, which is probably why players prefer them (bat speed) but it is definitely more "brittle."

Most of the "power" from a bat comes from its trampoline effect, similar to a tennis racket. The more the bat flexes when making contact with the ball, the further the ball will go.

I started hitting a lot of home runs in softball, in the past few years, and it has nothing to do with me. I'm not a big guy and I haven't gotten stronger in my old age. :-)

The composite alloys they use to make modern bats allow them to flex so much at the handle and also in the face of the barrel, that it's like hitting a golf ball with a tennis racket. When you hit the ball square at the apex of your swing, you can feel the trampoline effect and the ball goes about 360 feet.

[Zz Yzx]

I second that. There's a palpable sweet spot.

-Zz

[Puckdropper]

Steve Turner wrote in news:i7agsi$u93$ [e-mail]:

Instead of changing the wood, why not look into some elasticy coating the bats could be covered with? When the bat does break, the coating would (perhaps) keep the bat together at least long enough to slow the speed down to something safer.

The idea is not dissimilar to putting plastic between layers of glass to make them impact resistant.

Puckdropper

[Zz Yzx]

Right now, it's against the rules. The bats must be made out of a single piece of wood (no laminations or alterations).

Ask me about the "4 outs in an inning" rule. It's a good one.

-Zz

[-MIKE-]

Not sure about that. I think there are laminated bats, now. I may be wrong, or maybe they're just experimenting with it in the minors.

In any case, I don't see a need to do anything. If you look at the odds, someone getting hurt by a flying broken bat is about as rare as getting hit by lighting while cashing a winning mega-millions lotto ticket.

[Puckdropper]

-MIKE- wrote in news:i7bseg$lq9$ [e-mail]:

I've never heard of anyone getting hit by lightning while cashing a winning mega-millions lotto ticket, but I know of a few Cubs players over time who have gotten hit with flying broken bats. Right now, it's just a hazard of being a player.

Puckdropper

[Ross Hebeisen]

I would think some good old piss elm aka american elm would make a hellava bat. will not split very easy, it has stringy cross grain and light weight. kinda like the olde piss elm club.

[Steve Turner]

Ok, I'll bite. What is the "4 outs in an inning" rule?

[Steve Turner]

Perhaps, but I'd have to think by now that with the huge popularity of baseball that people have experimented with bats made from almost every wood, but have rejected most species for one reason or other. Going back (once again) to what I know, I can see many parallels between baseball bats and drum sticks. You can make 20 pairs of identical drum sticks from

20 different types of wood, and they will all feel different in a drummer's hand. Some won't hold up to the punishment for 5 minutes, some are way too heavy, some are too light, and some are too rigid and transfer unwanted shock straight to your hands. Very few will have just the right weight and feel, the right "resonance" and "flex", but when they do you KNOW it. I'd have to think that experienced baseball players are just like any other expert in their craft; they like to have just the right tool for the job.

[-MIKE-]

Hit and hurt are different animals. But I failed to make my point... Read the article...

"Colvin's upper left chest was punctured by a flying piece of Welington Castillo's(notes) bat as Colvin came home from third to score on a double. If the term "impaled" doesn't do the job by itself, the aftermath makes for one of the scariest baseball injuries in recent memory. Colvin needed to be hospitalized because of a wound described as "fairly deep." Sutures helped to close the wound and a tube was inserted into Colvin's lung to prevent it from collapsing."

That kind of hurt is as rare as what I described and surely doesn't necessitate any further safety measures.

[-MIKE-]

When I got my lathe, one of the first things I did was make a bunch of drumsticks. I was a man on a mission, making sticks from every hardwood and exotic in my pile. I quickly learned that there was a good reason most stick makers have settled on oak, hickory, and maple to make their sticks, and cost is only part of the equation.

The sticks I made from anything but oak and maple (didn't try hickory), including a bunch of exotics like cocabolo, wenge, bubinga, padouk, ebony and others either snapped in a a couple minutes or left my hands feeling like I'd used a ROS for 7 hrs straight.

The pair I made from oak was the best feeling sticks I've ever played, but the other thing I quickly learned was that my time was much more valuable and it took me a lot longer than the stick companies to make a $4 pair of sticks. :-)

[Stuart]

Well, cricket bats have always been made out of willow so why not that.

[Father Haskell]

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Duct tape.