Baseball Bats Essay Example For Students

Baseball Bats Essay In any game, the equipment players use determines the way the game unfolds. Tryto imagine a soccer game played with an American football! Or try playing tenniswith the wooden racquets of thirty years ago. Change the equipment, and youdiscover a very different game. As part of my look at baseball, I decided toexamine the tool of the baseball trade: Bats. Perhaps the most crucial andvisible tool in baseball is the bat. A bat is the offensive weapon, the toolwith which runs are scored. To understand the history and science of bats, Iread a magazine published by Louisville Slugger, in Louisville, Kentucky home ofthe Hillerich Bradsby Company, Inc. (also known as HB), themanufacturers of perhaps Americas most famous bat, the Louisville Slugger. Through the reading I learned how the modern bat came to be, and what it mightbecome. In 1884, John Andrew Bud Hillerich played hooky from hisfathers woodworking shop and went to a baseball game. There he watched a starplayer, Pete The Old Gladiator Browning, struggling in a battingslump. After the game, Hillerich invited Browning back to the shop, where theypicked out a piece of white ash, and Hillerich began making a bat. They workedlate into the night, with Browning giving advice and taking practice swings fromtime to time. What happened next is legend. The next day, Browning wentthree-for-three, and soon the new bat was in demand across the league. HBflourished from there. First called the Falls City Slugger, the new bat wascalled the Louisville Slugger by 1894. Though Hillerichs father thought batswere an insignificant item, and preferred to continue making more dependableitems like bedposts and bowling pins, bats became a rapidly growing part of thefamily business. Just as it w as back then, the classic Louisville Slugger batused by todays professional players is made from white ash. The wood isspecially selected from forests in Pennsylvania and New York. The trees they usemust be at least fifty years old before they are harvested. After harvest, thewood is dried for six to eight months to a precise moisture level. The bestquality wood is selected for pro bats; the other 90 percent is used for consumermarket bats. White ash is used for its combination of hardness, strength,weight, feel, and durability. In past years, HB have made somebats out of hickory. But hickory timber is much heavier than ash, and playerstoday want light bats because theyve discovered that they can hit the ballfarther by swinging the bat fast. So they cant make the bats out of hickory. Though Babe Ruth, one of the all-time great home-run hitters, used a 42 or a 44ounce bat, players today use bats that weigh around 32 ounces. Even sluggerslike Mark McGwire and Ken Griffey, Jr. only use 33 ounce bats because they wantto generate great bat speed. How do you make a wooden bat you ask. Heres how. The wood is milled into round, 37 inch blanks, or billets, which are shipped tothe HB factory in Louisville. There they are turned on a tracer lathe,using a metal template that guides the lathes blades. These templates are setup to the specifications of each pro player. Then the bats are fire-branded withthe Louisville Slugger mark. This mark is put on the flat of the woods grain,where the bat is weakest. Players learn to swing with the label facing either upor down, so that they can strike the ball with the edge grain, where the bat isstrongest. Hitting on the flat grain will more often than not result in a brokenbat. Finally, the bats are dipped into one of several possible water-basedfinishes or varnishes, which gives bats their final color andprotective coat. Each player selects the finish they desire, while a fewplayers, such as former Kansas City Royals star George Brett, chose to leavetheir bats unfinished. Players today may go through as many as six or sevendozen bats in a se ason. (In early years, players used only use ten or twelvebats.) In fact, one player, Joe Sewell, used the same bat for fourteen years. Women in combat1 EssayThat energy is almost totally elastic; it is given back, or bounces back, almost100 percent. The energy absorbed when the ball is deformed is almost 75 percentlost to heat, and thus wasted as far as propelling the ball. Because of thistrampoline effect, you can hit the ball somewhat faster, and somewhat farther. In fact, when the NCAA approved the use of aluminum bats in 1974, HBstarted comparing statistics and found that the team batting averages went upabout twenty points, and the home-run production about doubled. The primaryreason that wooden bats are required in the pros is due to this performancedifference. The pro leagues want to protect their historical records, and theywant the performance of the game to be the result of human ability, rather thanthe technology of the bats. Ever-increasing performance of metal bats has begunto affect the game at the college level and below. Aluminum bat makers have beenexploring stronger and lighter metal alloys. The results include ever-lighterbats with thinner walls, and consequently higher bat speeds and even greatertrampoline effects. A ball hit by these bats travels farther and faster. Inaddition, HB has already made a bat called the AirAttack in which apolyurethane bladder is inserted into the center hollow, then filled withpressurized nitroge n gas. The gas pressure in the bladder supports bat walls,pushing them out after they are deformed under impact. This support allows amuch thinner wall and a greater trampoline effect. HB has a softball batcalled the Inertia, in which the interior of the bat contains a rolled-up steelspring that does the same thing. Batting averages and home-run production havegone up consistently at the college level as these advances have appeared. Titanium was used briefly, but it was quickly prohibited because that metalscombination of high strength, light weight, and elasticity was clearly going toresult in shattering all hitting records in all phases of the game. You couldactually grab the barrel of the bat in your hands and squeeze, and you couldfeel the bat give. The trampoline effect was enormous, and though titanium wasbanned, Louisville Slugger learned a lot about how to make aluminum bats achievethe same effect. Recently, a heated debate has broken out over the widespreaduse of aluminum bats in college leagues. Many in baseball fear that moderntechnology is creating a superbat, which will irrevocably alter thegame and endanger players. Indeed, the rules committees are diligently lookingat the performance of bats, and they have already put some limits onperformance; they may well add more. They are not only concerned about theintegrity of the game, the balance between offense and defense, but they arealso concerned abo ut safety. The NCAA rules committee has decreed that manymodern metal bats are dangerous to players and disruptive to the game. The highspeed of the ball coming off the these metal bats has put pitchers in danger, asa line drive hit at them may be traveling too fast for them to get out of theway. And the energy of a hit ball increases as the square of the velocity, so afast hit can do more damage. As a result, the NCAA has ordered recently that batmanufacturers alter their designs to make bats heavier, with a smaller barrel. And baseball organizations from college to Little League are considering areturn to a wooden bats only policy, though the expense of woodenbats may make such a move unfeasible.