Jesse LaCasse, a 30-year-old currently playing professional baseball in Germany, started making bats in 2006, using high quality beechwood and setting up shop with a lathe and a handful of custom orders.
Now Subway is giving him a boost by highlighting LaCasse Bats in the 2010 Senior League World Series. Subway is a big sponsor of the event, and their pitchman Jared Fogle will be on hand for the closing ceremonies in Bangor, ME this weekend.
The exposure gained from this kind of tie-in is a huge boost for a small, custom bat-maker like LaCasse, and he’s already seeing a spike in demand for his totally customized bats offered in a variety of woods, color schemes, and technical specifications.
Just last week, we blogged about how dangerous broken bats can be - for players, coaches, officials and fans. So we weren’t too surprised to see this article in the news about a man who was hit in the face by a broken bat at a Mets game a few years ago who has filed a lawsuit seeking compensation for his injuries.
As much as we feel for the guy (he suffered serious injuries to his face and head), we were a little surprised at the numerous targets of his lawsuit: he is suing the Luis Castillo (the batter), Ramon Castro (Castillo’s then-teammate who loaned him the bat), the New York Mets, Major League Baseball and Rawlings, the bat manufacturer. No word yet on if he’s suing the hot dog vendor from that section of the stadium.
Seriously, though, if his contention is that maple bats are inherently more dangerous than other bats, is the batter really to blame? Or the player who owned the bat? Or the team?
Broken wood bats can be dangerous. Razor-sharp shards of wood flying through the air, who knows where they may land? Players, coaches, officials and fans have all been injured by broken bats.
There’s been a lot of talk about the relative safety of wood bats recently, which makes us wonder about the different kinds of breaks and what causes them. There’s a really interesting site that explores the science of wood bats and explains the various causes of “bat failures.” Recommended reading.
In a widely anticipated move, the National Federation of State High School Associations enacted a rule banning the use of composite bats in high school baseball effective from the start of the 2010-11 school year.
They have, however, left some wiggle room, as the NFHS may consider waivers or modifications to this rule if composite bats can meet certain standards.
This has been a hot topic on the baseball-bats.net forum lately. What do you think about composite bats and this new ruling? Please discuss.
Figuring out what to do when your playing days are over is a big deal for most professional athletes.
Javy Lopez, one of the Atlanta Braves all-time fan favorites, is no exception.
When Javy retired, he started his own bat company - Bones Bats - and he’s keeping himself busy by building a business that provides top quality wood bats for every standard of play.
Javy spoke to with Anna Kim of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution after appearing at the Braves Alumni Weekend at Turner Field to talk about what he’s been doing since retiring from baseball. A good read.
What’s the difference between reinventing the wheel and building a better mousetrap?
The former is a pointless exercise, and the latter is, well, basically what a New Jersey man has done by creating a revolutionary new wood composite bat that’s shatterproof.
Interesting article by Ken Belson at The New York Times website about the bat-making industry.
The story focusses on BWP Bats, a up-and-coming player in the industry that specializes in maple bats it manufactures from wood it harvests from its own forests and runs through its own mills. There’s a lot of inside info here on everything from manufacturing to marketing - worth a read.
When I saw the headline about a prehistoric mammal that used its tail like a baseball bat, I was only mildly tempted to click. I doubted there’d be video, and I figured video would be the best reason to look. But something still made me click it. And I’m glad I did, because had I not, I wouldn’t know that these mammals, called glyptodonts, not used its tail like a bat…it also has a sweet spot!
Long before Hank and the Babe were smacking homers (and also long before Andy Roddick found his 155 mph serve), Glyptodonts figured out the science behind the swing. MSNBC.com’s coverage included an explanation from research Rudermar Ernesto Blanco: The center of percussion is a point where you can deliver a very powerful blow with a baseball bat, a tennis racket, a sword, an axe or any hand-held implement, but the forces against your hands are almost zero.
They look like giant armadillos, so the bat boys would have some trouble keeping things organized. Catchers wouldn’t be safe, and I wouldn’t expect great baserunning speed. But the next time you make good contact, you may want to give a little thanks to these prehistoric creatures.
When this game first caught my eye, I thought it might be the last straw toward my exclamation, “Enough with the video games—go outside!” But since it’s the middle of a thunderstorm and I’ve been trapped in traffic with friends with iPhones quite enough this summer, I realized that the new iPhone game Baseball Slugger: Home Run Race 3D might be just what the iPhone-owning baseball fan might need during some downtime. Since I don’t have an iPhone (at least not yet), I’m relying on this demo:
You can look into plenty of the reviews, but my question is this: Is this a worthy downtime of our favorite pastime, or is it just another game keeping would-be batters indoors?
(And are you worried about ruining your Wii Baseball swing?)
Figuring out what to do when your playing days are over is a big deal for most professional athletes.
The Mets caught a break when newly-crowned Miss USA Rima Fakih stopped by Citi Field before a game last Thursday.