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Originally Posted by AtlUmpSteve
Yes, they do. The bat is manufactured and intended to hit a softball; that is a finite force of a finite size applied in individual instances. That is part of the manufacturer's characteristics, design, and specifications for use. The actions you describe, same as hitting a fence post, do not meet that design characteristis, therefore have altered the bat.
This is your judgment call; you need to listen to their viewpoint of what clearly is intended to be illegal as much as you need to allow them to dispute a fair/foul call.
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First off, this isn't some during the game incident we're talking about here, but rather a philosophical debate between players and even other umpires on both a message board and in real life face to face conversations. Don't think for a moment that I wouldn't hesitate to toss out a bat or player if I knew for a fact that a bat had been rolled/viced and was being used in a game. I know the intent of the rules and regs, and know how to enforce it. Of course the only way for me to know if something was done to the bat would be for the player who owns the bat to tell me what he/she did with it.
The lawyer in me says the ASA regs/rules is full of holes. I told the gentlemen (plural) I'm debating this with that I personally see the rolling/vicing/whatever of bats as altering, but I also see that the ASA regs absolutely do not state what 'altered' is well enough to fully cover this issue. A simple addition to the wording of the rules/regs would completely solve this issue. Either that, or in plain and simple words put into the regs/rules the only approved method for breaking in and using an ASA approved bat is to hit a ball (whether from a person tossing it to you as the batter, from a pitching machine of some type, or from hitting off a tee). If we leave the regs/rules wording as is, hitting a .47/525 ball using an ASA bat thereby makes it "altered" and no longer allowed for use. How do I enforce that? Hell, hitting .44/375 balls with an ASA bat would then make the bat 'altered' if I were to use your line of thinking then. Bats like the Miken Freak98 take many a hit to finally open up, but when they do finally get to that point, and up until the point where they are no longer usable (when they break, basically), they easily could exceed the 98mph testing standards if they were to be resubmitted for official testing! These are scientific facts which can be backed up with further testing.
Anyway, the point isn't to start some kind of debate/argument with my fellow umps here. The point is to better protect the ASA as an organization from a liability standpoint. If or when a lawsuit came up about this very issue, a decent attorney could easily defeat the verbiage of the ASA rules/regs and cause us to have a setback. None of us want that to happen, I guarantee it...