Building Better Bats
Since the early 1990s, changes in baseball bat geometry, wood species used in manufacturing (i.e., a major shift from white ash to maple), and unregulated slope of grain production specifications have led to a larger than usual number of bats being broken—not just broken but actually shattered—resulting in numerous injuries to players, coaches, and fans.
Research conducted by a panel convened by Major League Baseball’s Safety and Health Advisory Committee in 2008 found that the majority of multi-piece failures (shattering) were the result of slope of grain issues, not so much a result of the increased use of maple.
However, the type of wood did play one role: Ash has a distinctive grain pattern, making it easy to assess the straightness of grain. Maple, however, is much more uniform in structure, making it difficult to determine grain direction by sight alone. Changes to the manufacturing process as a result of this understanding led to a significant reduction in the number of bats breaking into multiple pieces.
Still, bat shattering continued, and new research found an additional cause to be the shape of some bats, using thicker than normal barrels with thinner than normal handles. The research team also found that overdrying could cause weakness and affect a bat’s strength integrity. Changes in MLB regulations helped to reduce these problems.
As a result of all of the research and changes, the rate of bats being shattered this year (2013) is less than half of what it was in 2008.
Four Wood Technologies to Watch
1. Cellulose nanocrystals could provide better gap-filling ability for adhesives and could make wood products stronger.
2. Cellulose nanofibrils could be used to create light-weight armaments, solar collectors, or synthetic ligaments and tendons for human bodies.
3. Cross-laminated timber could allow wood to compete with concrete in the construction of buildings from five to 20 stories tall.
4. Bio-based adhesives could potentially replace current petroleum-derived adhesives.
William Atkinson has been a full-time freelance business writer since 1976.
