Every once in a while, you see an MLB player take out the frustration of an unsuccessful plate appearance on his bat. Rarely is it a pitcher, but Giants’ pitcher Jeff Samardzija did just that after stranding a couple runners.
This looks immensely painful and potentially dangerous to me. I don’t even depend on the physical well-being of my body to earn a living, but I can’t think of any situation where I would risk damaging my leg by slamming a piece of hardwood onto it with all my strength.
Anyone here tried it? Did it hurt? How difficult was it to do? Did it take a couple tries?
I did it once while playing college ball. But I had a huge advantage in that I knew I had just broken the bat on the pop out I had just hit. I basically just finished what my 3rd out pop up had already started.
Did I mention there were runner and second and on third? Or that we were two runs down in a late inning?
I can’t imagine even trying, unless, like leftfield6 said, you knew the bat was already cracked. I’d probably just end up looking stupid and getting a huge bruise on my leg.
I’ve seen players break bats over their legs and I’m not surprised that they can do it, since the handles are often relatively thin and the players are generally very strong. What surprises me is that they have the presence of mind to rotate the bat so that it can be broken in that manner. When you’re using a wooden bat it’s important to hold it in such a way that when you swing and make contact with the ball, the grain of the wood is oriented correctly. If you do it wrong you greatly increase the chances of breaking the bat. For the uninitiated, you want to make contact with the ball on the surface 90 degrees away from the label, but not on the label or on the side opposite the label.
To break the bat, you need to do the opposite - orient the bat so that the wood grain is in the most favorable direction for breaking it. The further you rotate the bat the harder it will be to break. I’ve seen players forget this and fail to break the bat but in most cases they get it on the first attempt, which suggests that they all think “I’m mad and I’m going to break this bat but first I’d better rotate it to the optimal position so that I will be able to do so”. Maybe they’re so used to holding the bat in the proper way that they can just as easily hold it incorrectly automatically too.
Not quite the same, but at a martial arts event I saw a woman kick through two bats in a single kick (a low shin kick). It’s not breaking them that hurts, it’s the failed practice attempts that hurt the most
Yep, they were (and I guess still are) allowed. I played from 1983-1986. Most of my peers were using metal bats, but I still felt I had a better “feel” for the ball with a wooden bat. Since I wasn’t a power hitter anyway, using a wooden bat didn’t handicap me that much. 4 years of college ball, and I hit 3 homeruns. Total.
BTW, even with it splintered it still left an impressive bruise on my thigh.
Samardzija also played football at Notre Dame. It’s not a great stretch to imagine that he kept up some of the same workout routines.
Was it smart? Probably not, as pitchers use their legs more than most other players (I would imagine, anyway, with the pushoff of the mound added in to fielding - and batting in the NL). But it’s not really surprising.
