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9/19 Post Game


gizmo

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Luna hit a pinch hit home run :o Uggla hit a home run! Sorry just trying to focus on the positives...I feel for those who actually were at this game..fanning themselves to try to stay cool. They showed the crowd at one point and there were two women with their faces red from heat. Right now the Marlins are really playing horribly. I think they're looking forward to the end of the season

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Luna hit a pinch hit home run :o Uggla hit a home run! Sorry just trying to focus on the positives...I feel for those who actually were at this game..fanning themselves to try to stay cool. They showed the crowd at one point and there were two women with their faces red from heat. Right now the Marlins are really playing horribly. I think they're looking forward to the end of the season

 

 

Why weren't they watching the Dolphins?

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Wow, nobody said a thing about the Cubs player getting stabbed by a piece of broken baseball bat and going to the hospital. I just saw it on the news. I'm surprised that doesn't happen more oftern. Is this incident gonna lead to any major changes in baseball bats. Aluminum is out of the question, so what about carbon fiber bats? Is that possible? They're gonna have to use a different material sooner or later. Either they're gonna run out of trees to kill or the green movement is get to them.

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Is this incident gonna lead to any major changes in baseball bats

 

It'll probably take a serious injury, but banning maple bats would eliminate most of the problem. Maple bats shatter with such high frequency because it is much more brittle than ash. Players like maple because it is slightly harder than ash, but it's quite obviously much more dangerous.

 

Either they're gonna run out of trees to kill or (,,,)

 

U.S. hardwood production is over 10 billion board feet (12" x 12" x 1") per year.

 

Hillerich & Bradsby, makers of the Louisville Slugger, the most popular brand of bat makes about a half-million bats a year (all types, including those for MLB.) Assume they make 25% of all bats. That's puts total production at about 2 million bats per year.

 

Each bat made consumes about 4.4 board feet of hardwood (4 x 4 x 40 = 640 cubic inches / 144 cu. in. per board foot.) That's about 8.8 million board feet of lumber to produce 2 million bats.

 

Bat production consumes less than one tenth of one percent of U.S. hardwood production, so, no, we're not gonna run out of trees.

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Is this incident gonna lead to any major changes in baseball bats

 

It'll probably take a serious injury, but banning maple bats would eliminate most of the problem. Maple bats shatter with such high frequency because it is much more brittle than ash. Players like maple because it is slightly harder than ash, but it's quite obviously much more dangerous.

 

Either they're gonna run out of trees to kill or (,,,)

 

U.S. hardwood production is over 10 billion board feet (12" x 12" x 1") per year.

 

Hillerich & Bradsby, makers of the Louisville Slugger, the most popular brand of bat makes about a half-million bats a year (all types, including those for MLB.) Assume they make 25% of all bats. That's puts total production at about 2 million bats per year.

 

Each bat made consumes about 4.4 board feet of hardwood (4 x 4 x 40 = 640 cubic inches / 144 cu. in. per board foot.) That's about 8.8 million board feet of lumber to produce 2 million bats.

 

Bat production consumes less than one tenth of one percent of U.S. hardwood production, so, no, we're not gonna run out of trees.

 

You're like a miniature Justice Brandeis :lol

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Well, it could be. I assumed H&B only has 25% of the market, it could easily be 50%. Which would cut that 1/10th percent in half.

 

For anyone who cares about the relative hardness of maple versus ash, the Janka hardness scale, which measures the force needed to embed a .444 inch steel ball into wood to a depth of .222 inch, rates maple at 1450 and ash at 1320 pounds-force.

 

By way of comparison, pine rates at 420, balsa at 100 and some South American and African exotics are the hardest at 4500.

 

So, maple is about 10% harder than ash. Minor difference, but ballplayers want every edge they can get. Even if it might injure someone. In the case of a bat the injury would be to someone other than the hitter.

 

We came close to seeing a player with a severed carotid artery gushing blood on the field. That can kill you within 5 minutes. I guess the rule is don't watch the ball until you're sure that there isn't a nasty hunk of shattered bat flying at you.

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I mean certainly, something bad might happen.

 

At the same time, it's been over a hundred years. I think we can say the chances of something bad happening is slim.

 

Reminds me of when the minor league first base coach died from getting hit on the head and all of a sudden there was a big thing about their safety. And that's then their ingenious fix (Mandatory helmets that don't even cover the part of the head he was hit).

 

(How long have base coaches been used?)

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Good article on maple versus ash from 2 years ago:

 

http://www.rockymoun...te-maple-vs-ash

 

Notes a couple of nasty injuries in the news back then, there have been more since, and nothing much has happened since on the bat front; MLB continues to collect busted bats and study the issue.

 

As for whether players actually gain any advantage:

 

A study in 2005 by Dr. James Sherwood of the Baseball Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell found no evidence that a baseball hit by a maple bat carried farther than an ash bat-struck baseball.

 

Considering that baseball moves at a glacial pace when it comes to rules changes (generally a good thing,) nothing will likely happen until there's some horrendous injury or a death, and maybe not even then. My opinion is that maple should be banned, it's too brittle (perhaps due to being over-dried to get the weight down) and dangerous for no net detectable gain in performance even though it's slightly harder.

 

At least institute a minimum moisture-content level (yes, it's easily tested) to prevent over-drying, a la the ball rules in Colorado.

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I would have guessed it would have been much less than one tenth of one percent.

 

I should add, and I shared your inclination before I ran my approximation, the .001 is of hardwood production. The U.S. also produces 45 billion board feet of softwood lumber every year (not that they make any bats out of pine, etc.) Bats only account for one or two ten-thousandths of total lumber production, truly infinitesimal and more in line with a reasonable perception.

 

We have plenty of trees, because the people who harvest them like Weyerhaeuser, not being stupid, have been planting new ones for the last 70-80 years. Sort of like Loria (and many other owners) re-seeding the minors periodically. Don't know where anyone gets the idea we're running out other than from tree-hugger propaganda, never mind that the level of bat production could never possibly make even the slightest difference to the general public.

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