Bat, namely, the wooden stick for batting a ball. There are two kinds of bats used now in the baseball field, wood bat and aluminium bat.
The difference
Bats from Japanese Occupation
(Photo by Mr. Hsieh Shih Yuan)
There are two major kinds of bats played in the baseball game. The wood bat is solid. If a player failed to hit the center of the ball or the center of the bat, he cannot make a nice hit easily. Therefore, it is easy to break the bat if the player does not have good hitting technique. So the damage of the wood bats is higher than the aluminum ones. On the other hand, the cost of the wood bat is lower than the aluminum ones. The factories producing wood bats usually carve their brand names on the most fragile part of the bats. Their intention is to remind the users not to hit in that place. In the mean time, the professional players of the USA, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan use wood bats. Even the World Championships of the adult baseball changed to wood bats. Some of the teenager players in Taiwan use wood bats, too. The aluminum bat is hollow.Since it is more flexible than the wood bats, players without good skills also can hit the ball to a very far distance easily. More than that, the bat is not easy to break compared to the wood ones, even with a little bit dented, the aluminum bat is still usable. So the loss of the aluminum bat is less than the wood one, and the price of it is relatively higher.
Introducing the material of wood bat
Mr. Wu TsungHan's authorization to quote
Professional used maple bat
(Photo by Mr. Chung Meng Wen)
Bats have to withstand crash from high speed balls, ande are very breakable, therefore, only sselected wood material are usable. Louisville Slugger , the biggest bat maker in the US informed us that the most suitable bat material is White Ash. We will now commence to introduce some of the wood material.
◎(White Ash)
Louisville Slugger produced its first White Ash bat in 1884, and opened the era of custom made bats for playersNorth American White Ash has soft, light and flexible quality, offers better batting performance. But White Ash bat does not endure much usage. 84% of MLB players use White Ash bats.
◎(Maple)
Maple is harder, heavier and less flexible than White Ash. Maple's recent popularity is due to the bigger built of recent players. Barry Bonds, who uses Maple bat, has excellent performance in the field lately also enhance the popularity of Maple bats.
◎(Blue Tamo、Blue Ash)
Blue Ash of Japan and China has similar quality of White Ash, yet softer in texture, therefore dents on the barrel easily.
Baseball Chemistry
According toUSDA， the mosture percentage of white ash is 0.60(m.c. 12%)，MOR 1078kgf/cm^2，horizental sustability 518.7kgf/cm^2，fliexibility 109.2kg-cm. The moisture percentage of Black maple is 0.57(m.c. 12%)，MOR 931kgf/cm^2，horizental susbility is 467.6kgf/cm^2，flexibility is 101.6kg-cm。 Accordinly, Taiwan might have two trees that are usable for bats：。
