When you grab a baseball, the first thing you might think is how hard it is. You don't necessarily think of a baseball as bouncy. But that's exactly what a ball does when it hits a bat. The bouncier the ball, the farther it will travel when hit. Another word for bouncy is elastic, which means that when an object is deformed by an collision, it tends to bounce back, returning the kinetic energy of the impact into motion in the other direction.
Objects that are not bouncy, or elastic, tend to dissipate the energy of the collision as heat, rather than returning it as motion. The measure of this bounce is called the coefficient of restitution. No ball is perfectly elastic; the elasticity of a particular ball depends on its construction. If you change the bounciness of a ball, you radically change the game.
The modern baseball is tightly regulated: It has a rubber-covered cork core, which is then wound tightly with yarn and covered with alum leather. But in the early years of the game, prior to , baseballs were very bouncy, built with a solid rubber core, and were only about 3 inches in diameter. Hitting these "lively" balls, some pro teams tallied as many as one hundred runs per game. As the game evolved, bigger, heavier, less bouncy balls were developed. Referred to as "dead balls," these balls didn't travel as far or as fast as the lively balls.
Before the characteristics of the ball were regulated, home teams could choose which kind of ball they would use: If you had better batters than the other team, you'd choose a lively ball; if your team's strengths were pitching and fielding, you'd choose a dead ball.
In , Albert G. Spalding, a former pro who started the company that became the primary supplier of baseballs throughout the world, began making balls with very lively cork centers.
Many baseball historians assert that after the major leagues introduced an even livelier baseball to encourage power hitting and draw fans back to the games after the Black Sox gambling scandal. A drastic change in the game resulted: In , National League hitters hit home runs; in they hit By , teams scored 3. Others dispute the "juiced" ball theory, saying that during the same time period baseball authorities outlawed tampering with the ball, depriving pitchers of some of their most effective weapons, and letting the hitters have a field day.
Since then, there have been accusations that Spalding periodically introduces lively or "juiced" balls, made by winding the yarn inside the ball tighter.
Players have complained of balls being too dead only once, during the WW II years, when a rubber shortage forced Spalding to make balls with a less bouncy balata rubber core. Clearly, applying new technology to the equipment of any game can result in fundamental changes in the game itself.
What if the rule-making organizations were to allow technological advance without restriction? What would the game be like then?
Even just using the existing technology like titanium bats and more elastic balls, we could play a game of baseball in which scores like would be common. But what if fielders were allowed to wear jet packs with which to chase down the new high-velocity drives hit by batters? The debate between the strong traditions of baseball and the search for a technological "edge" will no doubt go on, and time will reveal what kind of baseball future generations will play.
A billet is loaded into the lathe, and a template that determines the bat model's shape is then selected. Tools of the Trade In any game, the equipment players use determines the way the game unfolds.
Storyline by Noel Wanner. How a Baseball Bat Is Made. At the Louisville Slugger Factory. Premium ash wood is cured for six months then milled into "billets.
In roughly 10 seconds, the lathe brings the new bat to life. Players drill a hole at the end of the bat to insert the corks to create an unfair advantage via their swing. The concept behind corking a bat means that the bat weight is light so that you can swing faster. There have been a few notable moments in baseball where someone was using a corked bat during a baseball game. Sammy Sosa was a prolific home run hitter, but when his bat shattered upon contact, the umpires immediately saw the corks inside the bat.
The umpires immediately ejected Sammy Sosa from the game, but he apologized quickly after that. There are plenty of baseball bat brands in professional baseball today.
Some of the most famous baseball bat brands in professional leagues include Louisville Slugger, Marucci, Rawlings, and Easton. Professional players like to customize their bats as well, so some batters will opt for different colors of the same bat to use to hit. MLB players rock pink armbands, necklaces, batting gloves, and cleats, but the pink wooden bats stand out the most during the game.
The partnership with pink in the game is to raise awareness is with Susan. G Komen for the Cure Organization. College baseball players can use wooden bats during a baseball game, but most use a metal bat. Using a metal bat allows college baseball players to hit balls further and increase their chances of having a higher batting average. Having better hitting stats in NCAA means college baseball players have a better chance of being drafted by a Major League Baseball team in the future.
While Minor League and Major League Players use wooden bats to hit during baseball games, little league baseball teams, softball teams, and high school leagues should not. If everyone in the little league were using a wooden bat, you would not see many balls hit to an outfielder.
It uses antibodies Bone-jarring tackles almost always make the highlight reel in a National Football League game. And those tackles happen Look Out Below! November 18, This picture came across my desk this morning, and it caught my attention because it is Skip to main content.
The most notorious bat used in the MLB, the legendary Louisville Slugger, is constructed from 50 year old white ash wood carefully selected from the forests of New York and Pennsylvania. The selection and manufacturing process is quite in-depth, the wood must come from trees at least five decades old, the wood is then cut and pieced before it undergoes a drying process to get the bat to the exact moisture requirements. After the drying process, the bats are milled into shape then treated with a water based varnish to both protect the grain of the bat and to give them their iconic finish.
The ash wood bats are then selected for their balance, weight, durably, and hardness. The top tier bats are then selected by professional leagues, while the rest are sent into the consumer market.
Other types of wood that have been used in bat construction include hickory Babe Ruth used a ounce hickory bat , bamboo, and maple.
This number can vary greatly due to the difficulty of calculating the stats of each individual player into the equation since no season is quite the same, but figures show that the average MLB player can go through as little as bats per season, while some can exceed a few dozen. It depends on a number of factors, including how many at bats an individual player has per season and the ability of the player to hit the sweet spot. The general school of thought is the average player will go through one bat per at bats while some can take up to at bats depending on the construction and the player.
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