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Bill Conlin: Explosion of maple bats bad for baseball
By Bill Conlin
Philadelphia Daily News
Daily News Sports Columnist
Jul 24, 2008
TRY THIS THE next time you're going to fly. Show up at airport security holding a maple baseball bat that has been shattered just above the handle, leaving a 30-inch cross between a war club and a javelin. In other words, a
deadly
weapon . . .
The Homeland Security cops would have you in handcuffs faster than you could say "Osama bin Selig."
A great number of these potentially lethal weapons have become the bat of choice at any level of baseball where wood bats are mandated by rule. Professional players love them, even though you can see some hitters go through a half-dozen of them in a game. Even though you can no longer watch a major league game without seeing these not-so-splendid splinters pinwheeling toward a pitcher or an infielder about to make a play on the mace that just launched the baseball.
They flat love them. Estimates place the percentage of big-league players who use maple somewhere around 70 percent, but that may be low. Ballplayers will try anything they perceive will improve their game - steroids, anyone? - and since Barry Bonds started swinging a black maple bat custom made for him in Canada by a manufacturer named Sam Holman, they have proliferated like, well, trees.
Dating to 1884, the official bat of major league baseball was the ubiquitous Louisville Slugger manufactured by the Hillerich & Bradsby Company. Their bats came - and still come - in an infinite combination of sizes, shapes, lengths and weights from the thick-handled cudgels favored by the contact hitters of yore to the spindly, thin-handled, big-headed, 30-32 ouncers favored by the Bat Speed Generation. A rival company, Adirondack (now owned by Rawlings), produced a handsome bat favored by many modern era sluggers, including Willie Mays, Duke Snider and Mike Schmidt. (Toward the end of his career, Schmidt was swinging a Louisville Slugger R-43 model and probably hit his 500th home run with one.)
The Louisville Slugger and Adirondack were both superb bats that shared a common trait. They were made of northern ash. When ash broke it did not leave a hitter holding a 6-inch handle in his bottom hand while the rest of it went anywhere from into the crowd to into a neck of a coach, or off the head of an umpire. Or even off the shoulder of the guy swinging it, which is what happened to Phillies outfielder Geoff Jenkins on Sunday in a bizarre home plate accident.
Pirates hitting coach Don Long was in the dugout April 15 in Dodger Stadium when All-Star outfielder Nate McLouth, hitting in the eighth inning, lined a double to right - with a maple bat that split lengthwise. Long was watching the play unfold when the now familiar spear flew into the dugout like a runaway helicopter blade and struck the coach several inches below his left eye. He sustained a nasty gash and significant nerve damage to the area. When Long smiles, it is with the right side of his mouth.
Don recently told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he has yet to see a game this season that didn't have at least one near-miss involving a shattered maple bat. Just over a week after Long nearly lost an eye, a Dodger Stadium fan named Susan Rhodes had her jaw shattered by a large fragment off the bat of Colorado's Todd Helton.
Ash bats rarely shatter. They tend to crack across the grain, but rarely break into pieces. More than one player has given first aid to an injured favorite bat with judicious use of wood glue. Thin handled bats of both types are vulnerable to being retired by a ball hit off the end. For maple, however, that is the one most likely to create a spear that goes flying off looking for a victim while the batter stands like a relay runner waiting to hand off the baton.
Men who know wood say it's all in the "rays."
A poster to a useful site named "Baseball Think Factory" offers this explanation of why maple explodes and ash breaks but rarely launches part of itself as a harpoon. Writes Kevin:
"The reason maple bats shatter and ash bats don't is because the wood from an ash tree, like oak, has what are called 'rays' . . . horizontal fibers that radiate out from the center and keep the wood from splitting vertically . . . what happens to a maple bat when . . . [you hit] the ball off the end . . . Wood is weakest along the vertical axis, where the rings meet. Ash rays cross those boundaries at a right angle, considerably strengthening the vertical plane of the wood. You ever notice when those karate dudes break boards with karate chops, they never use oak boards? They almost always use pine, maple or poplar, because it's a breeze to pop 3/4-inch thick boards along the vertical plane. If they tried it with oak, they would break their hands . . . "
Citizens Bank Park is a prime site for an inevitable maple bat disaster with the living room proximity to the action in its field-level box seats.
It is never a bad idea for fans lucky enough to score those choice tickets to bring a glove - more for protection of self and family members than to collect souvenirs.
Well, here's some free advice from me to you. For about $190, you can go online and buy yourself a "like new" official, police-used, body vest.
Think of how cool it will look covered with colorful Phillies logos. Including, of course, a large bull's-eye. *
Send e-mail to bill1chair@aol.com .
For recent columns, go to
http://go.philly.com/conlin .
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