At high schools and colleges across the nation, the debate about aluminum bat safety continues. Play Ball USA and Ron Cacini offer helpful words in this video. Cacini doesn’t try to convince you of an answer to the alumnium vs. wood question. Instead, he explains that it’s proper technique, bat weight, and bat length, that will help boost safety for those whose leagues use aluminum bats. He gives a general explanation of bat exit speed ratio. Cacini doesn’t talk much about wood bats, so it does have an air of advocating for aluminum.
For a casual video shoot in a batting cage, the former Houston farmhand really has a decent swing.
The 2009 Home Run Derby brought some exciting action, and a brand new leader in the baseball bat category. While the Champion Swung the original maple bat - Sam Bat , 4 of the 8 players were using Marucci - a name most hadn’t heard of just 2 years ago.
As the College World Series grows more popular each year, the NCAA will also need to be more vigilant each year. Sure, the college game shouldn’t be as scandal-prone as the majors have been, but it can still have its problems. One of the big potential concerns is bat rolling, stretching the metal fibers by applying pressure from two rollers. The stretched fibers are more flexible, giving the bat more pop. Of course rolling is illegal in NCAA play, and The Boston Herald reports that of 500 bats tested at the College World Series, 25 were illegal, five because of rolling.
According to the Herald,Easton bats is working on a softball bat that would visually expose the affects of rolling, but there’s no word about the same practice for baseball bats.
The NCAA will be watching, and improving its ability to watch. We’ll keep an eye on it too.
Dustin Ackley. Tim Wheeler. Grant Green. Which way is your team going when it looks for the best bats in tonight’s 2009 MLB draft? Sure, plenty of duds have come from drafts in recent memory, but that doesn’t stop us from thinking our favorite team’s scouting department is going to find this year’s biggest start. Who are you pulling for your team to pick up in tonight’s draft?
Had you already heard about the response Vernon Wells had for a bunch of hecklers at the beginning of this month? After enough innings of shouts and jeers, the story goes, Wells tossed a ball up to the stands, with a handwritten message:
“Here’s your ball, now please tell me what gas station you work at so I can come and yell at you when you’re working. Please sit down, shut up, and enjoy the game. From your favorite centerfielder, Vernon Wells”
Maybe the fans got under Wells’s skin, but that’s a pretty comedic retort. Poetry it’s not. Billy Chapel’s signed message in For the Love of the Game it’s not. (And while we’re on Costner, it’s also not as good as the note Crash sent Annie in Bull Durham.)
HomerDerby caught up with the hecklers to share their story and posted the interview. Of course, they may not be up to the caliber of the original hecklers, but you can judge for yourself.
Baseball’s efforts for cancer awareness don’t stop a the MLB-wide Mother’s Day campaign. This week, the Yankees welcomed an honorary bat girl, Polly Tompkins, who is battling stage 4 melanoma.
Tompkins threw out the first pitch, hung out with Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, and Nick Swisher, and brought about 100 friends and family members to the game. Donning a white and pink jersey, when Tompkins pointed to her group in the stands, Rodriguez and Swisher jumped into the section, shook hands, and signed autographs.
It’s not every day that the pregame schedule takes on this meaning—it’s good to see the game making a difference and giving people an incredible experience.
Do you remember which Chicago club President Barack Obama favors? In interview with Stuart Scott last year, the then-candidate gave the answer. The White Sox. He even got to throw out the first pitch at their season opener this year.
But Obama has been a baseball fan since long before he moved to Chicago…the Tribune found a great childhood photo of him in Hawaii taking an early swing. The bat looks a little big for him… maybe he should have taken our advice about youth bats.
Obama is a lefty now, but from the follow-through, it looks like he may have been a righty in his youth. We’ll let that slide.
The baseball bat industry is so huge that of course most of the big companies are mass producing their bats. But handcrafted baseball bats aren’t a lost art, and Morgan Paige from PressPassTV has a report with great visuals from on how Akadema makes bats by hand.
I don’t like to think about baseball and weddings at the same time. At least not often. Usually they’re separate, and I’m OK with that. But baseball season and wedding season start around the same time, so a few connections are natural.
Heather Travaglini, a wedding planner in Baltimore, had a lot of clever ideas if you want to incorporate a little baseball in your wedding. I know for some the idea of proposing on the scoreboard is a little much (it is for me). But I did like the idea of subbing baseball bats or baseballs for the guestbook. It’s unique without being too distracting, and it makes for a cool keepsake to display. Subtle, but special.
Get ready, vintage baseball bat fans, Major League Baseball is taking steps to make sure that our favorite relics are the real deal. Whether they’re hanging in the Hall of Fame or up for auction to hang in our display cases, the new authentication program is designed to be sure that every prized item is legitimate. It’s not just vintage bats and game-used bats. Balls and bases, uniforms, even sometimes the dirt on the field, is being rigorously monitored. Over the last few years we’ve noticed how extreme fraud has become, so for the serious collector, this new program will be very welcome news.
