Baseball bats - Ash vs. Maple?

Steve Turner · 2010-09-21T14:53:03+00:00

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?