History of Wooden Baseball Bats
Baseball bats come in all sizes and all shapes. Well not all shapes, bats have always been long and cylindrical, not a triangle or a rhombus. And they have a history as long as baseball itself. Which makes sense. It would have been a tough game to play while swinging a shoe or a golf iron. Because of that, bats--specifically wooden ones--are a symbol of the game's heritage and mystique. All of the great hits--Mazeroski to win the 1960 World Series, Hank Aaron hitting No. 715 in 1974, Kirk Gibson in 1988--came from a wooden bat.
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Origins
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Early baseball bats tended to be heavy and long because players made them on their own. How early is early? We're talking 1840 through 1870s time frame as the rules of baseball came into focus. Many teams shared one bat, which was usually made from whatever timber was nearby.
The Louisville Slugger
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There are numerous legends, stories and theories about how baseball bats first started to be made en masse. Even the Louisville Slugger, which is somewhat synonymous with baseball bats, isn't even how sure it all happened because various company officials gave differing stories about how they started over the decades. But what is clear is that sometime in the early 1880s, the wood-working company started to turn baseball bats for local professional athletes. Other players saw those bats and a business was born. The Louisville Slugger was registered as a trademark in 1894 by Bud Hillerich, whose father ran the wood-working company. On a side note, Louisville Slugger was the nickname of a popular ball player named Pete Browning, who is most often believed to be the first to use a company-made bat.
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The Explosion
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Still, many players wanted to make their own bats. Remember the majority of pro ball players grew up on farms so making baseball bats wasn't that hard to do. The growth in production, though, started in 1905 when Pittsburgh Pirates star Hone Wagner endorsed a Louisville Slugger model. That led to a massive growth in bats as players young and old wanted a bat that resembled the one used by the top hitter in the National League. Today, most professional players have their own model of bat they endorse.
Changes in Style
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Baseball bats have been slowly getting lighter over the decades. One of the great baseball film clips of all time is players at a 1970s All-Star Game trying to swing a 42-ounce bat that belonged to Babe Ruth. Now bats weight about 33 ounces. While bats are traditionally made of white ash wood, many are now made of maple or even hickory.
Regulations
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Major League Baseball rules state that a bat be smooth and round; be no longer than 42 inches and be no thicker than 2.75 inches.
Black Betsy
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No story would be complete with the tale of "Shoeless" Joe Jackson's Black Betsy. The piece of wood is probably the most famous bat ever because its owner, Jackson, was a feared hitter who was banned from baseball following the 1920 season for allegations over a World Series fix. Jackson always denied that, and his bat, like him, grew in legend. It was sold at auction in 2001 for $577,000 to a collector in Pennsylvania. That is the highest price ever fetched for a piece of athletic equipment. One note about Black Betsy, it is marked as a Spalding bat, but not made by the company. A friend gave the bat to Jackson in 1918 and later when he made the professional ranks, Spalding finished the bat and stamped it.
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