New ASA Bat Standard, starting June 2008

oooops wrong again parkdaddy........

......just look over your shoulder, yep its fishman in rightfield rolling around when guru cranks it up!

 

Now that I have stirred the pot......

....ya'll help me with this. What the hell is bat rolling? How does it work? Whats the engineering skinny on metals or composites etc. and how does it effect the "pop" of a bat?....Braves feel free to move this into a seperate thread if necessary. I'm dead serious, whats the gig on this machine folks?

 

bat rolling...

...while I have never seen it done, my understanding is that it "breaks in" a composite bat in like 5 minutes. What ever is inside a composite bat, breaks up with more use to give that trampoline effect. CD was right, when rolled, you have a lethal weapon. Ask some of your slowpitch buddies about taking a bat out the wrapper and hitting it against a tree!!!! The guy with the machine should drawn and quartered (spell check on that one)

 

ok, so a bat.....

.....has a trampoline effect. I believe I know what this effect is, but, I'm listening to TBR. Can we get some feedback and knowledgable input please. Thanks 3bagger for your post.

 

Composite bats are made with a thin shell between the outer shell and the inner carbon fibers. This shell reduces the amount of flex the barrel of the bat has out of the wrapper. Charlie does a lot more work directly with dealers than I do and maybe he can offer a different view, but this shell is basically like a thin candy coating that will eventually break down. As the bat is hit, the shell gradually breaks apart, allowing the carbon fibers below to start breaking in, or flexing. This is why composite bats test legal out of the wrapper and then get hotter.

Rolling a bat dramatically shortens the break in period for a bat. Generally, it takes about 400-500 good contacts on a bat to really start breaking it in. Rolling the bat does the same thing in about 5 minutes. It works like an old laundry roller from wayyyyyyyyyyy in the old days where you washed the laundry in the bucket and then fed it through two metal or wood rollers to squeeze the water out. Same thing here...you roll the bat through 2 metal rollers that compress the bat enough to crack that thin shell. By putting the bat through the roller several times to cover all the surface area, you can break the bat in and start using the trampoline effect of the carbon fibers. Also, since rolling a bat breaks that shell more evenly than does hitting a round ball in random places, there is more flex in the carbon fibers because more of the shell is broken up. I have also heard of people doing the same basic thing by wrapping the bat with a towel and putting it in a vise, squeezing it a little and then rotating it to do all sides of the bat.

In any way, this is illegal and alters the bats in a way that is dangerous for the kids (and a few 3rd base coaches). That is why the ASA has changed their bat standard to limit what technology can do to the game and what people can do with that technology. But have no doubt, no matter what rules are in place, someone will find a way to cheat that will eventually find its way to our great game. Just ask some serious slow pitch players how many different ways there are to alter a bat....that would be an interesting thread!

Hope this helps and if I've misspoken about anything on here, please feel free to tell me about it.

 

Steve...
Could not have explained it better...

Cheaters are always gonna cheat...
This makes it too easy....

This is something that needs to be policed, or it will impact
the technology that's available to our kids...

Wood bats and 44 core balls....
swing hard!!

 

Cheaters never get anything but a big bite on the butt from that wonderful thing called karma. there is enough going on in are world thats immorallaly wrong and you want to teach are children you have to be a cheater to be good. I don't know about everyone else but i want my dd to learn hard work and dedication is alot better pay off than anything she could do immorallaly wrong. SUCCESS COMES FROM HARD WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Well said lknsftbllfan09. Sadly this world has come to the point where everyone is looking for the short cut way to the top. I am one of those parents/coaches that still teach the girls that morals and hard work is the only way to success. I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you give your all at what ever you do, be it softball, school, flipping burgers, or the president of some fortune 500 company, you can consider yourself successful. The ones that try the shortcuts are usually the ones that we all have worked with that will walk over anyone in their attempt to get to the top. Eventually it catches up with them. As coaches and parents we should be promoting the right path to the top and anyone in our players and DD's life that promotes something different should be excluded. I say as punishment, any parent that rolls a bat gets to have his arm and hand rolled by us moral, rule abiding parents and coaches.

 

OK FOLKS......

.....I get the picture as to what this bat rolling gig is now. And MOST IMPORTANTLY, I see the majority of TBR users posting the same thing that I took offense to earlier. Thats cool. And it says alot about the fastpitch folks in our area, that we don't condone ill gotten gain.