Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from half
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer here
Speaker 1: at how Stuff Works in a love all things tech
Speaker 1: and today is an interesting topic. It's one that I
Speaker 1: would not have considered, but tech Stuff listener Carter asked
Speaker 1: that I record an episode about baseball bats, and on
Speaker 1: first blush, you might think such a topic is unfit
Speaker 1: for a technology podcast. The O E. D. That being
Speaker 1: The Oxford English Dictionary defines technology as quote the application
Speaker 1: of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry end quote.
Speaker 1: A baseball bat hardly seems to qualify on casual glance,
Speaker 1: but baseball is a big industry in of itself. In fact,
Speaker 1: according to Forbes, in two thousand seventeen, Major League base
Speaker 1: ball revenues were more than ten billion dollars. That was
Speaker 1: the first time in history that the league get hit
Speaker 1: a number that high. And when you have that much
Speaker 1: money dedicated to an endeavor, more attention, care, and detail
Speaker 1: comes to bear on every aspect of that industry, including,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, the construction and design of baseball bats.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of tech that goes into the
Speaker 1: making of a modern baseball bat these days, especially from
Speaker 1: the major manufacturers, and that's because baseball bats have become
Speaker 1: something of a revered piece of equipment. In fact, I'd
Speaker 1: go so far as to say there's a lot of
Speaker 1: superstition that feeds into the way baseball bats are constructed.
Speaker 1: Once a player finds a little success with a particular
Speaker 1: type of bat, they're likely to stick with that model
Speaker 1: out of a belief that at least some of their
Speaker 1: success is due to the performance of their equipment. But
Speaker 1: bats don't last forever, so there has to be some
Speaker 1: way to replicate a particular bat as closely as possible.
Speaker 1: When you're using a material like wood, that becomes challenging. So,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, this involves both advanced woodworking tools
Speaker 1: and a certain set of skills, as Leam Neeson would say,
Speaker 1: and it's certainly true that there are specific physics involved
Speaker 1: that make one bat different from another bat. So today
Speaker 1: we'll take a look at the history of the baseball bat,
Speaker 1: how bat size was eventually codified in the rules of baseball,
Speaker 1: and how these bats are made today. So batter up first,
Speaker 1: a bit about the history of baseball because it is
Speaker 1: based on lies and deceit and lots of money, which
Speaker 1: I think is really cool. Back in the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: there was an apocryphal story that made the rounds regarding
Speaker 1: baseball's origins, and this was a response to a request
Speaker 1: from a fellow by the name of Albert Goodwill Baulding. Spalding,
Speaker 1: whose name you might recognize if you've ever gone inside
Speaker 1: a sporting goods store, had played professional baseball in the
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies, and he was a pitcher. He was a
Speaker 1: high performing pitcher in the eighteen seventies, and he was
Speaker 1: reportedly one of the first players to use a baseball
Speaker 1: glove to help field the ball. He opened up a
Speaker 1: sporting goods store and became a part owner of the
Speaker 1: Chicago White Stockings baseball team. He was also one of
Speaker 1: the founders of the National League of Baseball. But one
Speaker 1: thing kept gnawing in the back of his mind. Where
Speaker 1: did baseball actually come from? This question about the origins
Speaker 1: of baseball didn't just pop up unprompted. Spalding's business published
Speaker 1: a journal called The Baseball Guide, and the editor of
Speaker 1: the Baseball Guide was a guy named Henry Chadwick, who
Speaker 1: wrote about what appeared to be the English roots of baseball,
Speaker 1: as in the country of England, baseball shared some similarities
Speaker 1: with some older games, like cricket, which had been around
Speaker 1: for quite some time, and a British game called rounders. Cricket,
Speaker 1: like I said, I've been around for for centuries in
Speaker 1: some form or another throughout English colonies and territories. Rounders, however,
Speaker 1: which shared several similar rules without a baseball, was seen
Speaker 1: as something of a children's game. Little girls played rounders.
Speaker 1: This appeared to gall Mr Spalding, who couldn't stand the
Speaker 1: thought of the sport he had played and now supported,
Speaker 1: grew out of a child's game from England. He wrote
Speaker 1: a rebuttal for the Baseball Guide and disputed that something
Speaker 1: as American as baseball could have evolved from a schoolyard
Speaker 1: game from England. He wanted some sort of definitive proof
Speaker 1: that baseball was through and through an American game played
Speaker 1: by Americans for Americans America, and so in the early
Speaker 1: twentieth century, Spaulding and his buddy Abraham G. Mills form
Speaker 1: an investigative body called the Mills Commission to look into
Speaker 1: the matter to call the body unbiased would be a
Speaker 1: flat out lie. Spalding stacked the commission with members who
Speaker 1: shared his anti rounders, anti English sentiments. Sportswriter Henry Chadwick,
Speaker 1: who had written about those similarities between baseball and rounders,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, was pointedly not invited to participate,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that Spalding had but looked for chadwick
Speaker 1: support for the idea of a an investigative commission in
Speaker 1: the first place. So he goes to Chadwick says, Hey,
Speaker 1: maybe we have an investigative body look into this matter
Speaker 1: and and and see if there is any link between
Speaker 1: rounders and baseball. And Chadwick says, yeah, that sounds it
Speaker 1: sounds reasonable. And then they specifically did not invite him
Speaker 1: to be part of this commission. Now, a fellow by
Speaker 1: the name of Abner Graves of Denver, Colorado, claimed to
Speaker 1: have the answers see the commission, published accounts in various
Speaker 1: newspapers across the country saying, do you have any evidence
Speaker 1: for the origins of baseball? Do you have stories, you
Speaker 1: have anything that can connect baseball to how it all
Speaker 1: got started here in the United States? And this guy
Speaker 1: named Abner Graves sent in a response. Graves, who was
Speaker 1: a miner out in Denver, Colorado, wrote that when he
Speaker 1: was growing up in Cooperstown, New York, he witnessed the
Speaker 1: creation of baseball. He was there when it started. He
Speaker 1: says that it all came from the mind of a
Speaker 1: guy named Abner double Day. It was a good American
Speaker 1: lad who went on to fire the very first shot
Speaker 1: for the Union in the Civil War at Fort Sumter,
Speaker 1: and he rose to the rank of Major General of
Speaker 1: volunteers during the war. According to Graves, double Day taught
Speaker 1: the game to local kids in Cooper Sound, New York,
Speaker 1: and he scratched out the diagram of a baseball diamond
Speaker 1: in the dirt, and later he drew it out on
Speaker 1: a piece of paper along with a bay six set
Speaker 1: of rules for the game, and thus claimed Graves was
Speaker 1: baseball born. It was the invention of a man who
Speaker 1: would go on to become a war hero for the
Speaker 1: Union during the Civil War. Without bothering to really investigate
Speaker 1: these claims too much, the Mills Commission published a report
Speaker 1: stating that baseball was really definitely certainly American through and through,
Speaker 1: and that double Day had invented the game around the
Speaker 1: year eighteen thirty nine. Further, a Cooper's Town millionaire named
Speaker 1: Stephen C. Clark felt that tourism was the only industry
Speaker 1: that could save his hometown, which was suffering during the
Speaker 1: Great Depression. A local farmer in Cooperstown, or near Cooperstown,
Speaker 1: actually just outside of it, discovered some of what were
Speaker 1: believed to be Abner Graves belongings in nineteen thirty five.
Speaker 1: This farmer was a relative of Abner Graves, and while
Speaker 1: going through one of the old houses, said, Hey, there's
Speaker 1: this trunk here, and it's got some stuff in it,
Speaker 1: um some photographs, some letters. There's also a ball very
Speaker 1: similar to the type they've been used in the early
Speaker 1: days of baseball, which Clark jumped on as definitive proof
Speaker 1: that this story was absolutely gospel, and he decided to
Speaker 1: create a new destination in Cooperstown. He declared that the
Speaker 1: baseball that was discovered was an Abner double day baseball,
Speaker 1: and he began plans to build a baseball museum, with
Speaker 1: the whole venture anchored to the idea that Cooperstown was
Speaker 1: the birthplace of the game. It would be ready to
Speaker 1: celebrate the centennial anniversary of baseball. According to the double
Speaker 1: Day story, which means that it would be ready in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine. More on that in a second. Now,
Speaker 1: there are more than a few problems with Abner Graves's story.
Speaker 1: Problem No. One. In eighteen thirty nine, Abner Graves would
Speaker 1: have been five years old. Abner double Day, the supposed
Speaker 1: inventor of baseball, would have been nearly twenty years old,
Speaker 1: and it seems unlikely that the two would have played
Speaker 1: together in a game of baseball. A twenty year old
Speaker 1: teaching a five year old how to play baseball in
Speaker 1: order to have an organized game of some sort does
Speaker 1: not seem very realistic. Problem Number two. In eighteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: Adner double Day wasn't in Cooperstown, New York. He was
Speaker 1: enrolled in West Point and didn't have leave to travel
Speaker 1: from campus until the summer of eighteen forty, and even
Speaker 1: then it was not for more than just a little
Speaker 1: bit more than a month. So Problem three. In all
Speaker 1: the surviving journals and papers that were written by double Day,
Speaker 1: none of them mentioned baseball. In fact, the only connection
Speaker 1: to baseball with double Day at all seems to be
Speaker 1: that he once requested some sporting equipment during his service
Speaker 1: in the Union Army for the purposes of recreation for soldiers.
Speaker 1: Problem number four. Alexander Cartwright Jr. Who was a founding
Speaker 1: member of the Knickerbocker Club in New York, was believed
Speaker 1: to be the person who drew out the structure of
Speaker 1: the Bay Baseball Diamond and wrote down the rules for
Speaker 1: the first time in and unlike the claim made by Graves,
Speaker 1: this claim actually had documentation to back it up. But
Speaker 1: the Hall of Fame is in Cooperstown, New York anyway. Now,
Speaker 1: thanks for indulging me and my love of history and
Speaker 1: of flim flam. Next we're gonna talk about the evolution
Speaker 1: of the baseball bat and the physics behind whacking a
Speaker 1: baseball real hard. But first let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. So the earliest bats were really
Speaker 1: just sticks, sturdy, handy stick you could use to bat
Speaker 1: at a ball. Early baseball players would frequently whittle their
Speaker 1: own bats to suit their individual playing styles. Pictures, by
Speaker 1: the way, would end up constructing their own baseballs before
Speaker 1: everything got organized and regulated. Before the game was structured
Speaker 1: enough to have the regulations about such things, bats could
Speaker 1: be of many different shapes and sizes. There were no
Speaker 1: guidelines saying they must be a certain length or smaller.
Speaker 1: Early baseball bats could be flat, they could be round,
Speaker 1: they could be long, they could be short, they could
Speaker 1: be fat. Bats also tend to be really heavy, because
Speaker 1: the common wisdom was if it's heavy, it'll make the
Speaker 1: ball go farther when you hit it. I'll talk more
Speaker 1: about that in the next section when we get to
Speaker 1: the physics of baseball. Bat's, by the way, have a
Speaker 1: basic anatomy. The business end of a baseball bat is
Speaker 1: the barrel. That's the wider end. That's the part that
Speaker 1: you hit the baseball with, or at least you try
Speaker 1: to hit the baseball with if you're like me, it's
Speaker 1: the part that totally with when the baseball flies past me.
Speaker 1: At the other end is the handle That obviously is
Speaker 1: the end that you hold onto and tada. That's your
Speaker 1: basic baseball bat anatomy. Players would either craft their own bats,
Speaker 1: or they would get a carpenter to make one for them,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they had to make do with makeshift bats.
Speaker 1: According to Roy Kerr, who wrote the book Sliding Billy
Speaker 1: Hamilton's The Life and times of baseball's first great leadoff hitter,
Speaker 1: the Philadelphia Athletics once ran into a bit of trouble
Speaker 1: during a game way back in eighteen sixty five, when
Speaker 1: the team broke every single bat they had brought to
Speaker 1: the game. They continued the game by using a shovel
Speaker 1: handle as their bat for the rest of play. In
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty four, a woodworker named j. A. Bud Hillaric
Speaker 1: attended a baseball game to watch his home team that
Speaker 1: would be the Louisville Eclipse and hit her Pete Browning
Speaker 1: stepped up to the plate. Now when he swung, he
Speaker 1: connected with the baseball, but he broke his bat during play.
Speaker 1: That inspired Hilaric to invite Browning back to Hillary's woodworking shop,
Speaker 1: and he created a personalized bat for Browning. Browning went
Speaker 1: on to use that bat in a game the following day,
Speaker 1: and he got three hits. Apparently, Browning bragged to his
Speaker 1: fellow teammates about his new custom made bats and orders
Speaker 1: started pouring in. Hill Eric thus created a new brand
Speaker 1: of bats that's famous to this day, the Louisville Slugger.
Speaker 1: By the end of the nineteenth century, baseball was starting
Speaker 1: to really coalesce as a truly organized sport, which meant
Speaker 1: rules were being laid down as to what could and
Speaker 1: could not be used with bats. The basic rules stated
Speaker 1: bats had to be round, so you couldn't have any
Speaker 1: more flat or angled bats. You know, bats that that
Speaker 1: had flat surfaces around them, like maybe a hexagonal bat.
Speaker 1: You couldn't do that. They had to be rounded. They
Speaker 1: could be no greater than two and three quarter inches
Speaker 1: or six point nine centimeters in diameter. They could be
Speaker 1: no longer than forty two inches or about a meter
Speaker 1: in length, and they should be made entirely out of hardwood,
Speaker 1: though the handle could be wrapped in twine or some
Speaker 1: other material to aid in gripping. But they didn't have
Speaker 1: a limit on bat wait. Early bats were made out
Speaker 1: of hickory, but the trend moved towards using white ash
Speaker 1: as the wood of choice. It was a little bit
Speaker 1: more durable and lighter than hickory was. That is until
Speaker 1: about two thousand one, because that's when Barry Bonds used
Speaker 1: a maple bat to set a single season record of
Speaker 1: seventy three home runs, which made maple a popular choice
Speaker 1: because clearly it was the bat that did all the work.
Speaker 1: Although to be fair, different woods do perform in different ways,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk more about that later. Uh, there are
Speaker 1: actual differences that can affect bat performance, so we'll we'll
Speaker 1: cover it now. In fact, white ash, for example, is
Speaker 1: lighter than hickory, so it's easier to swing the bat
Speaker 1: faster or to adjust more easily two different pitches. Maple
Speaker 1: is more flexible than ash, so it creates kind of
Speaker 1: a whip like motion that can impart some extra force
Speaker 1: on a ball when you make contact. But maple can
Speaker 1: also shatter more readily. That has actually prompted Major League
Speaker 1: Baseball to put a ban on softer types of maple wood,
Speaker 1: and also requires bats to have a barrel of no
Speaker 1: more than two point six one or six point six
Speaker 1: centimeters in diameter, so, in other words, they have to
Speaker 1: be less thick now than they used to be in
Speaker 1: order to limit the bat designs because you were having
Speaker 1: more and more bats that had a disproportionately thin handle
Speaker 1: compared to the barrel. It really helps cut down on
Speaker 1: some of the weight, but that meant that the amount
Speaker 1: of force that would happen when a bat collided with
Speaker 1: a ball could sometimes be enough to shatter the bat,
Speaker 1: to snap the handle and send shards everywhere. Maple is
Speaker 1: particularly bad about this and that can be actually dangerous
Speaker 1: for people on the field, so there's been some limitations
Speaker 1: on the bat width in order to decrease the likelihood
Speaker 1: of that happening. These days, professional players have six different
Speaker 1: woods they can choose from for their bats. For Major
Speaker 1: League Baseball, they include white ash, sugar maple, true hickory,
Speaker 1: yellow birch, red oak, and Japanese ash. Most bats, however,
Speaker 1: are either sugar maple or white ash. So let's walk
Speaker 1: through the journey of making a Louisville Slugger white ash
Speaker 1: baseball bat, because the whole thing is pretty fascinating and
Speaker 1: there are differences. You can buy bats from local bat
Speaker 1: manufacturers and they tend to follow a very similar approach,
Speaker 1: but usually they have less automation. They have a lot
Speaker 1: more hand crafting going into their bats. But generally speaking,
Speaker 1: this is the process. You start with a white ash
Speaker 1: tree that's at least fifty years old, so it is
Speaker 1: the right stature for you to start off with. The
Speaker 1: white ash and Louisville Sluggers comes from special forests in
Speaker 1: New York and Pennsylvania. So you cut down the tree,
Speaker 1: you remove the branches, you saw, the trunks into logs
Speaker 1: and those logs need to be ten to sixteen ft
Speaker 1: long or about three to five meters, and then you
Speaker 1: load those logs onto a truck and take them to
Speaker 1: a mill. The wood passes an inspection, so you look
Speaker 1: at the wood. You're looking for any imperfections that would
Speaker 1: affect back quality, things like knots in the wood or
Speaker 1: any rotting or anything like that. The logs that pass
Speaker 1: inspection go through a hydraulic wedge. The hydraulic wedge cuts
Speaker 1: the logs into splits that are about forty uh wide.
Speaker 1: So the splits then go into a lathe, and a
Speaker 1: lathe is a device that rotates whatever you're working on
Speaker 1: about an access of rotation so that you can do
Speaker 1: some sort of operation on it. Um Usually lathes will
Speaker 1: turn things fairly rapidly, and it's a frequent tool in woodworking.
Speaker 1: Lathes have been around for ages. So old lathes were
Speaker 1: ones that used ropes and gears and a treadle like
Speaker 1: a foot pedal to operate, and you would press down
Speaker 1: on the foot pedal it would pull down on a
Speaker 1: rope that would turn some uh gears and that would
Speaker 1: rotate the lathe and you would just do that over
Speaker 1: and over again. You would just keep pedaling in order
Speaker 1: to continue the rotational motion of whatever it was you're
Speaker 1: working on, and you would be able to smooth out
Speaker 1: surfaces this way. These days, of course, we have lathes
Speaker 1: that are connected to motors. The motors will turn at
Speaker 1: a pretty high rpm so that you can work on
Speaker 1: uh the wood and very rapidly start to shape it.
Speaker 1: Now that's only part of a lay. The other part
Speaker 1: is whatever tools you're using to shave down the wood,
Speaker 1: and that might be handheld, it might be part of
Speaker 1: a lathe where you just place it in the right position.
Speaker 1: It might even be fully automatic. But this is the
Speaker 1: hard surface that presses against the wood and shaves off,
Speaker 1: uh the outer layers. So as the wood rotates, it
Speaker 1: gets shaved down further and further right. So with the
Speaker 1: splits you put them in the lathe. You turn the
Speaker 1: splits around and around and around. The lathe will start
Speaker 1: to smooth off the corners rough edges of these splits.
Speaker 1: And once you do that, you end up with a
Speaker 1: length of wood that's called a billet b I l
Speaker 1: l e T. And the billets go through another inspection process,
Speaker 1: including weighing to make sure that they are still appropriate
Speaker 1: for bats, and based upon how much they weigh, they're
Speaker 1: gonna go toward different models of bats. Some wood is
Speaker 1: going to be more dense than others, and that means
Speaker 1: it's going to be heavier than others, and that may
Speaker 1: mean that it's better for one type of bat than another.
Speaker 1: More on that in a second. Now, when you've got
Speaker 1: these billets, you're not even ready to start with the
Speaker 1: batmaking process yet. Nope, you've got to spend some time first.
Speaker 1: Typically you would coat both ends of the billets, the
Speaker 1: cut ends with a preservative to keep it from rotting
Speaker 1: or or otherwise deteriorating, and then you season the billets.
Speaker 1: Now by seasoning, i'm talking about drying them out so
Speaker 1: they're considered to be green wood at this stage because
Speaker 1: the billets still contain sap and gum inside the wood.
Speaker 1: So seasoning is the process of letting these billets dry
Speaker 1: out over a very long period of time so that
Speaker 1: sap and gum leech out of the wood over time.
Speaker 1: Usually this takes between six months and two years before
Speaker 1: you're ready to actually take the next step. One. Seasoned,
Speaker 1: the billets are weighed again. That helps determine which model
Speaker 1: a bat The billets might be used for bat models
Speaker 1: are based off of older bats that players have favored.
Speaker 1: So you design a bat players like it, you say, well,
Speaker 1: this is going to serve as a model for future bats.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna design more bats to try and replicate the
Speaker 1: same design that we've created here, which could be tricky
Speaker 1: because again, wood density might be different, So you might
Speaker 1: end up creating a bat that's the exact same physical
Speaker 1: dimensions but ways slightly different from and the model. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are different ways you can take two avoid that.
Speaker 1: I'll talk a little bit more about that in a second.
Speaker 1: But it's tough to do because wood is an organic material.
Speaker 1: It's not like you can produce it chemically to be
Speaker 1: exactly the same and just pour that into a mold
Speaker 1: and get the exact same bat time after time after time.
Speaker 1: With wood, you're dealing with nature, and nature does not
Speaker 1: always replicate things exactly. Now, when it comes time to
Speaker 1: make the bat, you put the billet in another lathe,
Speaker 1: not a big surprise. An operation like Louisville Slugger has
Speaker 1: automatic lathes that can cut a billet into the rough
Speaker 1: shape of a bat. So you put it in this lathe.
Speaker 1: It holds the billet by either end. To think of
Speaker 1: it like a spike that sticks into the ends of
Speaker 1: this billet, rotates it around and around super fast, and
Speaker 1: this automatic machine ends up shaving away all the parts
Speaker 1: of the billet that don't look like a rough bat shape. Now,
Speaker 1: even then, this is just the basic shape of a bat.
Speaker 1: It's not close to your final format. Next would UH
Speaker 1: use a a human operator called a bat turner to
Speaker 1: do all the final shaping, the fine tuning that will
Speaker 1: turn this basic bat shape into an actual model of
Speaker 1: a bat that you are are using as your reference points.
Speaker 1: So typically you would have a reference model of the
Speaker 1: type of bat you want to make nearby, typically mounted
Speaker 1: behind the lathe, and you would use tools like calipers
Speaker 1: to measure how wide the model is at specific reference points,
Speaker 1: and then you would continue to shave away at this
Speaker 1: bat shaped piece of wood until it matched those measurements.
Speaker 1: So you'd use the calipers and take a very precise
Speaker 1: measurement of say the base of the handle. Well, you
Speaker 1: want to make sure that you shave the wood away
Speaker 1: in your billet of wood until it's that same same diameter,
Speaker 1: and the same is true for the entire length of
Speaker 1: the bat. You want to make sure you get all
Speaker 1: the curves properly designed. You want to make sure that
Speaker 1: the barrel of the bat is the same diameter as
Speaker 1: the original model. So this is a pretty delicate approach.
Speaker 1: If someone who has a practiced hand at it can
Speaker 1: do it fairly quickly, but anyone else it looks like magic.
Speaker 1: I've watched a lot of videos of bat turners doing this,
Speaker 1: and to me, it is really stress inducing because I
Speaker 1: think of how easy it would be to make a
Speaker 1: mistake that would ruin the bat that you're working on,
Speaker 1: and you would have completely wasted a billet if that happened.
Speaker 1: But the folks who do this, they're very highly skilled,
Speaker 1: and they're they've done it hundreds of times, and so
Speaker 1: they do this very quickly and confidently in a way
Speaker 1: that kind of what I'm both impressed by and terrified by, honestly.
Speaker 1: And eventually you get to a point that the bat
Speaker 1: you're working on as resembles the model as closely as possible. Now,
Speaker 1: if the weight is not quite right, if let's say
Speaker 1: that your billet bat, the one that you've just created,
Speaker 1: the brand new replica, let's say it's a little too heavy,
Speaker 1: you can actually shave a little bit off by making
Speaker 1: a divot in the top. In fact, use essentially a
Speaker 1: drill press is what it ends up being to carve
Speaker 1: out a hollow section at the end of the barrel.
Speaker 1: This is typical for most baseball bats in Major League Baseball,
Speaker 1: they have a hollow section at the very end, and
Speaker 1: you can use that to fine tune the weight a
Speaker 1: little bit. Uh. Same thing is true at the the
Speaker 1: bottom of it. They call this caping. When you cape
Speaker 1: a bat, you're you're creating this little hollow section at
Speaker 1: the ends, and the bat itself is still solid all
Speaker 1: the way through. It's just the very ends that have
Speaker 1: the little hollowed out sections. So then the bat has
Speaker 1: to be branded with the logo of the bat manufacturer,
Speaker 1: and the brand goes on a very specific place on
Speaker 1: the bat. You don't just put it anywhere. You actually
Speaker 1: place it on the flat of the woods grain on
Speaker 1: the bat. That's the weakest spot on the bat, and
Speaker 1: that serves as a guide for the player. You put
Speaker 1: the brand there to tell the player, Hey, this is
Speaker 1: the weakest spot on the bat. You don't want to
Speaker 1: hit a baseball with this spot because it could make
Speaker 1: the bat break Instead, what you would do is you
Speaker 1: do essentially a quarter turn either up or down on
Speaker 1: the bat, so that the logo is facing either down
Speaker 1: or up, and then you would have the sweet spot
Speaker 1: of the bat. The bat, the part of the bat
Speaker 1: where it's the strongest, where it's going to impart the
Speaker 1: most energy to the baseball, et cetera. So that sweet
Speaker 1: spot I'll talk more about in just a second. Even
Speaker 1: a well made bat, one that's made by experts, will
Speaker 1: not last forever. The average baseball bat and professional baseball
Speaker 1: has a life expectancy of about a month. So you
Speaker 1: think of all the different baseball players out there, all
Speaker 1: of whom have their own preference for bats, and you
Speaker 1: think about how many duplicates you're gonna need because of
Speaker 1: the length of a baseball season, not to mention the
Speaker 1: fact that there's the possibility of breakage, and you start
Speaker 1: coming up with a lot of bats just for Major
Speaker 1: League baseball, let alone all the other types of baseball
Speaker 1: out there. So it's fascinating to me that the process
Speaker 1: still uses a lot of human work that's not so
Speaker 1: automated that there's just a machine that's carving these things out.
Speaker 1: Because that's a lot of baseball bats. Y'all. We'll have
Speaker 1: more to talk about, especially with the physics of baseball,
Speaker 1: in just a minute, but first let's take another quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. When you strike a ball
Speaker 1: with a bat, first of all, you're a better player
Speaker 1: than I am, but you are transferring momentum from the
Speaker 1: bat to the ball. Momentum is the quantity of motion
Speaker 1: of a moving body, and we quantify this by multiplying
Speaker 1: the objects mass times its velocity. So the more massive
Speaker 1: something is and the faster it is moving in a
Speaker 1: certain direction, the more momentum it has. These days, a
Speaker 1: baseball is supposed to have a mass of between a
Speaker 1: hundred forty two and one grams, so I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: one as a happy medium. The average fastball pitch has
Speaker 1: a speed of around ninety miles per hour, or about
Speaker 1: a hundred forty five kilometers per hour. Now that means
Speaker 1: the ball is traveling at about forty point three meters
Speaker 1: per second. That gives our average baseball momentum at five
Speaker 1: point eight four kilos per second, presumably toward the batter.
Speaker 1: Because velocity is a vector, it has to have a definition,
Speaker 1: so we're assuming you're actually pitching toward a batter when
Speaker 1: you're throwing a ball like that. Now, let's consider a
Speaker 1: baseball bat. The average professional baseball players swing, according to
Speaker 1: Patrick Serveny, who actually studies such things, is around seventy
Speaker 1: miles per hour or about one kilometers per hour, meaning
Speaker 1: it's at about thirty one point four meters per second.
Speaker 1: So that's moving slower than the baseball. If the bat
Speaker 1: had the same mass as the ball, and we didn't
Speaker 1: have to factor in the player at all, the ball
Speaker 1: would transfer momentum to the bat and the bat would
Speaker 1: go backward. The ball would keep going forward a little bit,
Speaker 1: but at a slower velocity. But the bat is heavier
Speaker 1: than the ball, and it's more massive than the ball.
Speaker 1: Not to mention, it's connected to a baseball player who
Speaker 1: has mass as well, but we're ignoring the baseball player
Speaker 1: for this quick rundown. The average baseball bat mass is
Speaker 1: about point nine six kilograms, So the momentum a baseball
Speaker 1: bat has, again ignoring the presence of the actual player,
Speaker 1: would be about thirty point one four four kilograms meters
Speaker 1: per second. That's much larger than the baseball's five point
Speaker 1: eight four kilograms per meters per second. By the way,
Speaker 1: the moment of contact is incredibly short. It lasts about
Speaker 1: point seven milliseconds. At that moment, the baseball deforms, it
Speaker 1: flattens a bit from the collision. If you've ever watched
Speaker 1: really super slow motion video of a bat hitting a baseball,
Speaker 1: you'll see the baseball it flattens out and the bat
Speaker 1: also deforms a bit. It flexes backwards and the bat
Speaker 1: compresses due to this contact. Now, if you can swing
Speaker 1: a heavier bat with the same velocity, you're going to
Speaker 1: get a bigger transfer of momentum to the ball and
Speaker 1: make it travel with a greater exit velocity. Because again,
Speaker 1: momentum is mass times velocity. So if you increase the
Speaker 1: mass and you keep the velocity the same, you get
Speaker 1: greater mounts of momentum. Eventually, however, you'll find that the
Speaker 1: weight of the bat is slowing down your swing, so
Speaker 1: your velocity is decreasing, and that means that your amount
Speaker 1: of momentum will be affected. If the velocity decreases enough,
Speaker 1: then the added mass doesn't actually help you when you're
Speaker 1: transferring momentum to the ball. And Babe Ruth was known
Speaker 1: to swing around a bat with a hefty mass of
Speaker 1: one and a half kilograms or fifty four ounces. Now
Speaker 1: that wouldn't play so well today, not because the rules,
Speaker 1: but because of the style of play. With all the
Speaker 1: different types of pitches out there, you need a lighter
Speaker 1: bat so that you can adjust your swing style to
Speaker 1: hit the ball. The University of Arizona engineering professor Terry
Speaker 1: Baale found in his studies that a bat weighing thirty
Speaker 1: one to thirty two ounces or eight to nine seven
Speaker 1: grams is ideal for most professional players. So finding the
Speaker 1: right bat is something of both in art and a science.
Speaker 1: So there's no wonder that players can be particular about
Speaker 1: their bats. Now, as I said before, the calculations I
Speaker 1: gave only took the bat and ball into consideration. Clearly,
Speaker 1: you've got a player to think about two and that's
Speaker 1: going to change things up. Since the bat is effectively
Speaker 1: an extension of the player, and the players form and
Speaker 1: follow through as they swing is going to affect how
Speaker 1: a struck ball will behave. In addition, there is a
Speaker 1: spot on the bat called the sweet spot that plays
Speaker 1: a factor. Now, I have to admit when I first
Speaker 1: heard the term sweet spot, my skepticism kind of popped up.
Speaker 1: It sounded to me like almost like a superstition, like,
Speaker 1: oh no, there's this one spot on the bat that's perfect.
Speaker 1: But actually, as it turns out, the sweet spot is
Speaker 1: a thing sort of. Now. The reason I say sort
Speaker 1: of is because sweet spot is a poorly defined term,
Speaker 1: and depending on how you define it, it could be
Speaker 1: on a totally different part of the bat. Dr Daniel A.
Speaker 1: Russell of Pennsylvania State University wrote a full paper for
Speaker 1: the Acoustical Society about the sweet spot of a hollow
Speaker 1: baseball or softball bat. Now that that's different from major
Speaker 1: League baseball bats, but let's go with this for a second.
Speaker 1: He pointed out that identifying a sweet spot is tricky
Speaker 1: because there are different ways to define what a sweet
Speaker 1: spot is. For example, bowl you could say the sweet
Speaker 1: spot is the location on the bat where a player
Speaker 1: is able to transfer the maximum amount of energy to
Speaker 1: a ball. That makes sense, right, like, this is the
Speaker 1: one spot in the bat where if you can hit
Speaker 1: the ball right there, you, because of physics, you're going
Speaker 1: to be able to transfer the most amount of energy.
Speaker 1: It's the most efficient spot on the bat where you
Speaker 1: can hit a baseball. However, there's also a spot that
Speaker 1: would create the least vibrational sting in a player's hands. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously that would be more important if you're using, say
Speaker 1: an aluminum bat, which can create these pretty powerful vibrations
Speaker 1: that can really hurt if you're hitting the ball at
Speaker 1: a certain point on the bat. And the problem is
Speaker 1: the location for those two different types of sweet spots
Speaker 1: are in two different places on your average bat, and
Speaker 1: it depends a lot on the bat in question. There's
Speaker 1: not like an easy formula you can use that will
Speaker 1: tell you exactly where on all bats the sweet spot is. Now,
Speaker 1: Dr Russell made a compromise and said the sweet spot
Speaker 1: needs be a point on the barrel of the bat
Speaker 1: that exerts the most energy while creating the least amount
Speaker 1: of vibrational sting possible, And according to his studies, that
Speaker 1: would be a point approximately five to seven inches from
Speaker 1: the end of the barrel. So if you take the
Speaker 1: barrel side of a baseball bat and measure back about
Speaker 1: five inches, that would be the start of the sweet spot,
Speaker 1: and go back another two inches that would be the
Speaker 1: end of the sweet spot. So you'd want to hit
Speaker 1: a baseball somewhere in that zone in order to impart
Speaker 1: the most energy to the ball and to avoid the
Speaker 1: vibrational sting that will make your hands hurt. The paper
Speaker 1: goes into great detail of his methodologies that's putting it
Speaker 1: lightly for determining this, and it explains that even this
Speaker 1: definition is somewhat limited. I urge anyone interested in acoustics
Speaker 1: and baseball to give it a read, as it gets
Speaker 1: super technical and going into it further here would eventually
Speaker 1: reveal my own limitations when it comes to FIZ six.
Speaker 1: But I assume some of you out there are super
Speaker 1: interested in physics and would like to read more. So
Speaker 1: the paper's title is The Sweet Spot of a Hollow
Speaker 1: Baseball or softball Bat, and it's available online. You can
Speaker 1: read the whole thing, and it's pretty interesting. In professional baseball,
Speaker 1: bats again are supposed to be of solid hardwood. Now,
Speaker 1: there have been a few controversies in the past involving
Speaker 1: players using bats that have a cork center, which, at
Speaker 1: least in baseball lore, is supposed to make the bats
Speaker 1: lighter and easier to swing, and supposedly provides more bounce
Speaker 1: in contact with a ball, making it livelier. This is
Speaker 1: the so called trampoline effect. Uh Sammy Sosa was found
Speaker 1: using such a bat in the two thousand three season,
Speaker 1: and that caused a huge scandal. But while a corked
Speaker 1: bat will be lighter than one made of solid hardwood,
Speaker 1: because cork is a lightweight material, does it really create
Speaker 1: the trampoline effect? Is it really making it more spongy? Well?
Speaker 1: Alan Nathan, a physics professor at the University of Illinois,
Speaker 1: decided to look into this scientifically, and he took a
Speaker 1: essentially a cannon that would fire baseballs at different bats,
Speaker 1: some of which had corked centers. According to his team's tests,
Speaker 1: balls bouncing off a corked bat in a controlled environment
Speaker 1: actually left the bat at a lower velocity than balls
Speaker 1: that hit a solid bat, So in fact, they were
Speaker 1: traveling at a slower speed when they bounced off, and
Speaker 1: that would mean that they would travel not as far. Right,
Speaker 1: Like if you swung a corked bat and you made
Speaker 1: contact with a ball, and then you swung a solid
Speaker 1: bat and you made contact with the ball and everything
Speaker 1: else was equal, the corked ball or the cork bat
Speaker 1: version would not go as far according to the findings
Speaker 1: that Alan Nathan's team discovered, So the trampoline effect, according
Speaker 1: to us, his experiment was non existent. Further, the lighter
Speaker 1: weight of a corked bat would mean the bat wouldn't
Speaker 1: have as much mass in that transfer of momentum we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, So unless your swing was sped up significantly,
Speaker 1: you would end up transferring less energy to the baseball
Speaker 1: because you're using a less massive baseball bat. Well, a
Speaker 1: court bat would therefore not provide any sort of advantage
Speaker 1: when it comes to batting power. However, there could be
Speaker 1: another advantage. That advantage is that a player can actually
Speaker 1: wait to start a swing a little bit later. With
Speaker 1: a lighter bat, they don't have to engage the swing earlier. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the things about about mass is that you
Speaker 1: know it's has inertia, so to go from rest to
Speaker 1: motion requires energy. And then the more massive an object is,
Speaker 1: the more energy it requires. So if you're using a
Speaker 1: heavy bat and so on throws a pitch, you have
Speaker 1: less time to decide how you want to swing that
Speaker 1: bat before it gets too late, because it takes more
Speaker 1: time for you to swing the bat and get it
Speaker 1: up to the speed you need in order to whack
Speaker 1: that ball and get a home run. If you have
Speaker 1: a lighter bat, then you can wait a little bit
Speaker 1: longer and suss out where that ball is going. No,
Speaker 1: that's pretty important in a world where we have all
Speaker 1: sorts of different pitches. Back in the Babe Ruth days,
Speaker 1: pitching was not the art form that it is today,
Speaker 1: So you could swing a heavier bat and feel fairly
Speaker 1: confident that you can make contact with a good pitch.
Speaker 1: These days, it's a lot more tricky, So a lighter
Speaker 1: bat might give you the advantage. So you may not
Speaker 1: hit home run as easily, but you might hit more frequently.
Speaker 1: Your batting average could go up as a result, and
Speaker 1: if you're swinging hard enough, you might be able to
Speaker 1: overcome the limitations of the less massive nature of your
Speaker 1: corked bat, if in fact it were allowed. But it's
Speaker 1: against the rules. So if you're a major league baseball player,
Speaker 1: don't use a cork bat. It will come back to
Speaker 1: haunt you. So that's the science and technology behind baseball bats. Now,
Speaker 1: I didn't go into aluminum bats. Really, that's a different
Speaker 1: manufacturing process. It is fascinating and maybe in some future
Speaker 1: episode I'll cover the production of various types of sporting
Speaker 1: equipment in tech Stuff, and I'll cover aluminum bats in
Speaker 1: that one, I just didn't feel like it was uh
Speaker 1: gonna fit in today's episode. It would have made this
Speaker 1: episode a little too long, so I left it out
Speaker 1: on purpose. But I really wanted to concentrate on the
Speaker 1: bats that are allowed in Major League Baseball, So that
Speaker 1: made it easier because I just looked at the ones
Speaker 1: that are made off of that would um So someday
Speaker 1: I might go back and talk about aluminum bats, but
Speaker 1: not today. If any of you have suggestions for topics
Speaker 1: you would love for me to cover on Tech Stuff,
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