Science at the Crack of the Bat
Lynn Savage
If you’re a baseball fan, you’ve seen bats splintering all over major league parks the past couple of seasons. Not just cracking or breaking into two pieces, becoming expensive kindling, but shattering into shards that have sliced, stabbed or broken the bones of players, umps and fans in the stands.
Mark DeRosa of the Chicago Cubs splinters his bat during a game in 2007.
The alleged culprit in all of this mayhem is the wood from maple trees, which is used to make about half the bats used today by professional players. Several kinds of wood have been used to make bats – beginning with...Read full article
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Published: September 2008