Baseball

[pecunium]

Maple bats... bad idea.

I'm watching the Mets and the Dodgers. Chan Ho Park just missed getting run through by a "splinter" (to reach for a Men of War era term). If this were the first time in the season I'd seen a pitcher lucky to avoid being speared I'd not think so much of it.

But where I'd see a bat get broken every half a dozen games or so, now I'm seeing a steady diet of them; not less than one per game, and more like three. I do some woodworking, and maple didn't strike me as a great wood for bats. Seems I was right, and it was worse than I was afraid.

When an ash (or the rare player who still used hickory) bat breaks, it loses a lot of the swing energy and breaks into 3-4 pieces. Yes, the largest might travel, but it usually flies closer to the baseline the batter is facing than it does to the pitcher.

The maple seems to break into two pieces, and shoot much closer to straight up the middle, and with a larger piece of wood.

I hope that the player and owners meeting in June, to discuss the bats, outlaws maple... because someone is gonna get hurt.

Comments

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

Would this apply to extremely roughly used martial arts equipment as well? Given that the usual safety test of a hanbo is to give it a solid whack on a tree... I like oak, maple's been alright but not great, hadn't considered ash.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Yes, and no. The general level of impact for martial arts equipment is much less extreme for bat and ball. Realise that a baseball, at impact is compressed as much as 40 percent.

But, the cross section of most martial arts equipment is much less, the grain becomes much more important (the "thin" part of a bat is still thicker than most bo/jo). So ash would be ok, but I'd still go for oak or hickory.

There are some jo/bo and bokken available in some very hard (and heavy) exotic woods, but the weight makes them something for people with either very strong wrists, or lots of experience.

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

I rather strongly dislike being hit with the heavier woods.