Tool Of The Trade 13924 Essay Example

known as the Louisville Slugger by 1894. Even though Hillerich's father undervalued bats and preferred to focus on producing more reliable items such as bedposts and bowling pins, bats quickly became a significant part of the family's business. Today, the iconic Louisville Slugger bat that professional players use is still made from white ash, carefully selected from forests in Pennsylvania and New York.

The selection of trees for harvesting requires them to be at least fifty years old. After being harvested, the wood goes through a drying process lasting six to eight months to reach the desired moisture level. The highest quality wood is carefully selected for professional bats, while the remaining 90 percent is used for bats in the consumer market. White ash is the preferred wood type due to its beneficial characteristics like hardness, strength, weight, "feel," and durability.

In previous years, H&B has manufactured bats using hickory timber. However, hickory timber is significantly heavier than ash. In today's game, players prefer lightweight bats as it allows them to swing the bat faster, enabling them to hit the ball further. Hence, H;B cannot use hickory for making bats. Although Babe Ruth, a legendary home-run hitter, used bats weighing 42 or 44 ounces, modern players typically utilize bats weighing around 32 ounces. This holds true even for power hitters like Mark McGwire and Ken Griffey Jr.

Players only use 33 ounce bats to achieve high bat speed. The process of making a wooden bat involves milling the wood into round, 37 inch blanks called billets. These billets are then sent to the H;B factory in Louisville. At the factory, they are turned on a tracer lathe using

a metal template, which instructs the blades of the lathe. These templates are customized according to the specific requirements of each professional player.

The bats are fire-branded with the Louisville Slugger mark on the weakest part of the bat, the flat of the wood's grain. Players are taught to swing with the label facing up or down, so they can hit the ball with the strongest part of the bat, the edge grain. Using the flat grain often results in a broken bat. Afterward, the bats are dipped into water-based finishes or varnishes to give them their final color and protective coat. Each player can choose their preferred finish, but some players, like George Brett from the Kansas City Royals, prefer leaving their bats unfinished.

Players today may go through as many as six or seven dozen bats in a season. (In early years, players used only use ten or twelve bats.) In fact, one player, Joe Sewell, used the same bat for fourteen years. Joe attributes the increased breakage of bats to the thin-handled, large-barreled design of modern bats, and to the use of ash instead of hickory. A pitch that jams you inside will almost always saw off a modern bat, while an aluminum or old-fashioned hickory bat might produce a base hit.

Despite the manufacturing process for bats remaining mostly unchanged, the design of professional wooden bats has considerably evolved since 1884. Initially, bats had minimal taper, which led to a bat with a thick handle and a relatively small barrel. These early bats resembled an ax handle used as a bat. Today, players prefer bats with a thin handle and a large barrel to

concentrate the bat's weight in the hitting area.

The major league regulations state that bats must meet specific criteria. They should be round in shape and have a barrel size of no more than 2 3/4 inches. The length can reach up to 42 inches, with no weight requirement specified. In terms of design, professional player Jose Cardinal introduced the notable innovation of adding a "cup" at the end of wooden bats in 1972. This cup should not exceed 2 inches in width or 1 inch in depth. By incorporating this cup, bat makers can utilize denser and stronger timber while still achieving the desired weight.

During a recent visit to the Louisville Slugger Company, Ted Williams expressed his belief that if he were playing in today's era, all of his bats would be cupped. Currently, approximately half of the professional bats produced by H&B are cupped bats. Throughout the history of baseball, players have employed various unconventional methods to alter their bats in order to gain an advantage. The most common tactic has been known as "corking" the bat: Players would remove the end of the bat, drill a hole into its barrel, fill it with cork, and then reattach the end using glue.

The goal is to reduce the weight and improve the flexibility of the bat, but this does not provide any advantages to the bat. In fact, hollowing out its core weakens it. A notable instance occurred when [pro player] Graig Nettles inserted several rubber "superballs" into his bat, resulting in its fracture and release of all the balls.

According to Nettles, the reason behind corking bats is likely due to players using psychological tactics

rather than gaining a physical advantage. Some players have been known to use techniques such as rubbing their bats with ham bones or glass bottles, also known as "boning," in an effort to make the bat harder. However, this process seems to only provide psychological benefits and no actual advantages. In previous times, hitters would even go as far as illegally hammering nails into their bats to create a "iron" strike on the ball. Nonetheless, if the bat were able to become harder, it would ultimately hinder hitting performance.

Solid wood bats have minimal flexibility and therefore have limited energy storage. However, they efficiently transfer the stored energy back to the ball upon impact. Conversely, the ball undergoes significant distortion upon impact and is not as effective in returning the energy. Consequently, using a harder bat only results in further deformation of the ball and reduces the force of the hit. This raises the question: what about using a metal bat? The most remarkable development in baseball bats over the past three decades occurred in the 1970s with the introduction of aluminum tubes as bat material. These tubes are meticulously designed to vary in wall thickness and diameter, resulting in lightweight, sturdy, and hollow bats, which differ from solid wood bats.

Initially, the aluminum bat started as a metal version of a wooden bat that offered increased durability and cost-effectiveness. However, further exploration revealed additional distinctions between the two. Aluminum bats differ significantly from wooden bats as they are much lighter, weighing over five ounces. Additionally, they have larger barrels and their lightness allows for faster swings compared to wooden bats.

The hardness and resilience of aluminum

allow for greater speeds when the ball comes off the bat, resulting in its dominance at lower levels of baseball. Major League Baseball requires the use of wooden bats. However, the most significant difference between wooden and aluminum bats is the occurrence of a phenomenon known as the 'trampoline effect' with aluminum bats. This effect happens because the walls of the bat are thin enough to flex when the ball hits it. Some of the collision energy is transferred into the bat instead of the ball, and this energy is almost entirely elastic, bouncing back almost 100 percent. On the other hand, when the ball deforms the bat, around 75 percent of the absorbed energy is lost to heat and wasted in propelling the ball.

Due to the trampoline effect, the ball can be hit faster and farther. When aluminum bats were approved by the NCAA in 1974, H&B compared statistics and observed that team batting averages increased by approximately twenty points and home-run production doubled. The use of wooden bats in professional leagues is mandated to maintain the integrity of historical records and ensure that human ability, rather than bat technology, determines game performance. However, the increasing performance of metal bats has started to impact college-level and lower-level games. Manufacturers of aluminum bats have been researching stronger and lighter metal alloys.

The outcomes encompass bats that are becoming progressively lighter with thinner walls. As a result, these bats can achieve higher speeds and produce even stronger trampoline effects. When the ball is hit with such bats, it travels a greater distance and at a faster pace. Furthermore, H&B has already designed a bat named the AirAttack,

which incorporates a polyurethane bladder filled with pressurized nitrogen gas into its central hollow. This inflated bladder helps bolster the bat walls and pushes them back out into shape after they have been distorted upon impact.

This support enables a thinner wall and increased trampoline effect. H&B offers the Inertia, a softball bat featuring a rolled-up steel spring within the bat that accomplishes the same effect. At the college level, batting averages and home-run production have consistently increased with the introduction of these advancements. Titanium was briefly utilized but prohibited due to its combination of high strength, lightweight, and elasticity, which would undoubtedly break all hitting records in every aspect of the game.

The ability to grip and squeeze the barrel of a bat and feel it flex is possible. The significant bounce produced by the bat, similar to a trampoline effect, was so great that Louisville Slugger gained valuable knowledge about mimicking this effect in aluminum bats, despite titanium being banned. In recent times, a heated debate has arisen regarding the extensive use of aluminum bats in college leagues. Concerns within baseball revolve around the belief that modern technology is creating an unbeatable bat which could permanently alter the game and put players at risk. As a result, rules committees are actively assessing bat performance and have already implemented certain limits, with the potential for further restrictions. The committees are not only focused on maintaining the game's integrity and balance between offense and defense but also ensuring player safety.

The NCAA rules committee has deemed that numerous contemporary metal bats pose a threat to players and disrupt the game. The rapid ball speed generated by these metal

bats endangers pitchers, who may struggle to maneuver out of the trajectory of a line drive hit towards them. Moreover, the energy of a struck ball escalates exponentially with its velocity, amplifying the potential damage caused by a forceful hit. Consequentially, the NCAA has recently mandated that bat manufacturers modify their designs by increasing bat weight and reducing the size of the barrel. Additionally, baseball organizations ranging from college to Little League are contemplating a return to an exclusive use of "wooden bats," although the cost of wooden bats may impede this transition.