Just thought I would share a bit of information you may like to have when you are asked the stupid questions about ASA bat testing and reversal of certification.

Bats are tested by simulating a swing at 70 mph to contact a softball travelling at 60 mph. To attain certification, the ball may not leave the bat at a speed faster than 125' per second.

Bats are routinely purchased through a retail outlet and tested. Any time one of these bats fails to meet the standards, the bat is returned to the manufacturer with the findings. The manufacturer is given 30 days to bring the subject bats back in line with ASA standards. If the manufacturer fails to do so, the bat is then decertified.

So, it isn't like the manufacturers are taken by surprise or not given a chance to correct the situation PRIOR to any action taken by ASA. That means that the manufacturers knew toward the end of June that some bats were in danger of being removed from the list and then again in July.

Manufacturer forthrightness
 

I heard on the radio network news (ABC, I think) that the Massachusettes High School league is considering banning metal bats from high school baseball because the test results show that line drives come off of the metal bats much faster than off of wood bats.

What actually got my attention in this news story was that the news reader reported that the bat manufacturers "deny" that the ball comes off the metal bat faster than off a wooden bat.

Hmmmm...

The manufacturers are lying. All the test you need is to watch the ball come off the bat. Especially in slow-pitch, it's obviously <i>much</i> faster.

Guys who couldn't reach a 300-foot fence when I quit playing 20 years ago now routinely clear it by 25, 50, 75 feet. (And now they're in their 40s and 50s.) Fancy instruments aren't necessary when the empirical evidence is so clear. If the ball is going farther (and nobody can deny that it does), then it <i>has</i> to be coming off faster.

When metal bats first appeared—was it the early 1970s?—they did not hit the ball any farther. As I remember, they felt like a wooden bat when they hit the ball, too. Not now.

They need to start making aluminum bats out of aluminum again and get rid of the composites.