I was watching Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure and saw the part where Genghis Khan walked into the sporting goods shop at the mall. He seemed to take very well to a metal baseball bat and it got me wondering how useful it would be to him.
So how far back in history do you need to go for a regiment of metal baseball bat wielding solders to be of any use?
What about as a personal self defense weapon, compared to other weapons of the day?
I’d say the Tercio era (ETA: somewhere in the 1500s) is when they’d be obsolete. Metal bats would basically be mallets and as such would not have to penetrate armor to cause damage by sheer force of momentum. But by the tercio era you didn’t need as much armor-ignoring ability since infantry were in the process of ditching armor, and you couldn’t even get close to your enemy to hit them due to the pikes, and you’d likely get shot before you closed anyway.
War clubs were still being made and used in the 19th century, at least in some places in the world.
(They’re still being made today, but mostly for ceremonial purposes…)
Anybody who would use a wooden or wood-and-stone war club would likely find a milled aluminum baseball bat at least as good, and maybe preferable. And it makes such a lovely sound!
I hope this is sarcastic. Wood and leather are as satisfying and comforting as a gentle summer afternoon.
Metal bats sound like cheap video games.
…says someone who’s obviously never been hit in the head with an aluminum bat.
Not that far, sounds like a viable alternative to a field-made trench raiding club to me.
Grin! I was mostly thinking of what a Polynesian warrior might think, especially in times past. I mean, take a big, hefty, proud Maori from maybe A.D. 1850: he can hear wood on bone any time, but this new musical war-club is different!
As for a modern high-school baseball game, man, I do agree with you wholly!
I found this typology which may be of interest:
[taken from a WWI forum]
Maybe but by 1850 Maori had been using muskets for more than a generation, although the long-hadled tomahawk remained a popular melee weapon.
Ahhh, if you take “regiment of metal baseball bat wielding soldiers” to mean “with the bat as one of the main weapons” rather than as the main weapon, then the trench raiding club would count due to its mass production, as I was unaware of its ubiquity. However, I wonder if a metal baseball bat would be useful as a trench raiding club, as it’s too long to get a good swing in in all trenches.
Well, the technology for wooden clubs has been around a long time, yet nobody really ever fielded regiments of wooden club wielding soldiers. Everyone who organized regiments seemed to much prefer spears or swords (or various other pointy things). So my guess is that any ancient general offered a regiment’s worth of metal clubs would say “They make a nice sound, but really can we cut them up and sharpen them for arrowheads/spearheads/daggers or something?”
The OP just specified useful, not that they be a primary weapon. Considering that most metal bats are lightweight, extremely sturdy, and devastating when used properly, I think you wouldn’t have to fly too far back into history to see a real use for them as a back-up weapon. Most likely they would be rather good tools of war once you get past the modern era, and get back into mounted cavalry. Maces and clubs get a bad rap because they take less training to use elegantly. That does not make them any less dangerous or effective. While it is very possible to survive cuts, gashes, and even stabs, crushing wounds are always problematic. A metal bat in the hands of skilled warrior would be a holy terror on just about any battlefield pre-modern firearms until you get back into the ages of plate armor. Even then, such a sturdy lightweight mace would cause concussions, crushed helmets and faceplates, and possibly broken bones in limbs. Go back a bit further, and it becomes more effective again. A metal bat could easily snap or catch a sword blade without damage to the bat.
But it was always beneficial to have your enemy’s head bashed in, so in that sense clubs are always useful. I mean, it’s not like a current soldier couldn’t bash an enemy’s head in if he was close enough; it’s just that there are better weapons for taking the enemy out. And, judging from what troops have actually been equipped with, it seems that every organized army has always thought that this was true. (I could be wrong; if so let me know).
Yes, a metal bat could snap a sword blade, but on the other hand a sword wielder can stab a club wielder while the clubbist is still winding up. But why should we argue about what we think would happen, when as far as I can tell the fact is that armies that could make enough metal blades to equip a regiment all used spears or swords, not clubs, so bottom line: the people with actual experience all seemed to prefer blades.
So, sure, depending on the exact question, you can answer ‘Always’ or ‘Never’, but it seems to me that there’s no point in time for which the answer really changes.
Hurting someone with an aluminum bat is pretty hard. They’re not very dense, they’re not all that heavy, and they have a pretty wide contact area. A wooden bat would probably do better at bashing in someone else’s skull, up to the point where it broke.
Of bats and clubs: the proverbial caveman walks around with a club–fallen wood or a bone, because this is mega-something age. He doesn’t know from stone carving.
I am taking as a given that ever more effective tools for new uses were chicken-and-egging all over the place. I am also assuming that hominids were violent against other hominids, for food, territory, mating, etc. (I don’t know a thing about anthropology, but I do remember the beginning of 2001, which counts…)
So clubs it was, not the hand-to-hand pointy stone-chipped things.
Does this sound reasonable?
What also interests me in OP is “regimental.” Ie, as opposed to “melee.” Most pre-? engagements with hand weapons devolved into melees, I should think. When did massed, mustered (”regimental") tactics of man on man violence begin? Or, differently put, what/when were the first tactics with the earliest weapons?
I return to the word “violence,” because it is as old as the need for food, and the depictions on the cave walls estimated to be some 30,000 years old show teamwork in taking down animals.
Baseball bats are not and never have been useful on the battelefield. There’s a good reason why nobody, not even stone age cultures, every used weapons shaped like baseball bats. Think about it. A baseball bat is not a difficult shape to make, yet no culture ever used such a weapon. Lengths of straight wood the same length - shortstaffs - were ubiquitous, as were both shorter and longer lengths with straight handles and/or a knob end. I know people have this image of a caveman dragging a big club like an over-sized baseball bat, but such weapons never existed.But never was the baseball bat shape used. That’s because it absolutely sucks as a weapon. In a battlefield situation. I can train any reasonably fit person to disarm an attacker wielding a baseball bat in less than 15 minutes, and the technique is >99% effective. I would rather face somebody with a baseball bat than someone using their bare hands, and I would much, much rather face someone with a bat than someone with a piece of shovel handle the same length. Baseball bats are completely wrong as weapons.
The problem with baseball bats is that they are designed to deliver a lot of force to a predictable. spherical target.
Look at how a baseball batter stands: side on to the target he is hitting. The bat is carefully designed to deliver its power at the very end of its momentum at a point where the users arms are fully extended. That’s a great way to deliver a lot of force, but it’s shit for hitting an unpredictable target. If the target moved half a step inwards, the batter will be striking with his forearms, and won’t do any damage at all. If the attacker moves half a step outwards the attacker will miss altogether because he is already at full stretch with arms, feet and torso. That is the position that baseball bats are carefully designed to be used form, and it’s utterly useless in a fight. Compare the stance of a batter to the stance of someone fighting with a sword, mace or shortstaff. The batter stands side on to his target, the weapon uses face his target. The batter can strike, without changing stance, in a ~ 150o arc from a point at right angles to the attacker to a point at the midsection of his attacker. If his attacker moves even a little to the right he literally can’t be hit without the batter stepping forwards. The weapon fighter also strikes a 150o arc, but that arc is *centred *on the attacker. the attacker can’t just step out of it.
You can try this your self, Hold one hand in the other and see where in from of you you feel you could exert force. Because the arms are locked to the weapon, the strike range is centred directly between the shoulders. But a baseball bat is carefully engineered to strike at or near the extreme end of that strike range. That’s where the bat has the most momentum, so it’s great for hitting a predictable target, but it’s useless for trying to strike a target that see the blow coming and move aside. Such a blow delivers a lot of force, but it’s a literal haymaker. It’s slow, you can see it coming and it’s ridiculously simple to step away from or parry.
So, The only way to effectively use a baseball bat in a fight is to stop using it as a baseball bat and try to use it as a shortstaff or shillaleagh. But it is too thick to be gripped as a shortstaff, the striking surfaces are so thick that they are largely ineffective as a shortstaff and the bat is clearly unbalanced, with all the weight well past the midpoint of the weapon. A piece of wood is much more effective as a shortstaff than a baseball bat, so the bat is useless on the battlefield to the extent that it’s less useful than a length of wood.
So you can try using the bat as a one handed shillaleagh. Except that it is way to heavy to be easily used one handed, and the striking surfaces are so thick that they are largely ineffective if applied with single handed force. So the baseball bat is much less useful than a basic shillaleagh like a wooded mallet or knobkerrie that are light and short enough to use single handed and with a point that concentrates the force of the blow.
A baseball bat is also the wrong shape for a weapon. It has a broad striking surface, which is great for striking a relatively inflexible sphere, where the point of contact is infinitely small. But, aside from the very top of the head, the human body is neither spherical nor inflexible. A useful weapon needs to have a contact point that is narrow. so it concentrates the force. A blade shape is good, as is a sphere. Even a basic narrow cylinder is relatively effective. All those designs have been incorporated into real weapons. But a cylindrical surface as thick as your forearm? That’s just not a practical design.
So to answer the OP, baseball bats were never useful on the battlefield in the sense that anybody would willingly choose one. Soldiers on battlefields have been known to attack each other with rocks and sticks when nothing else was available, so in that situation a baseball bat might be considered “useful”, but no way would anybody select a baseball bat out of the items available at a sporting goods store. Things like tent poles and shovel handles would make a far more effective short staff, and a basic wooden mallet used to drive tent pegs would make a far more effective shillalleagh.
Baseball bats are useless weapons. Used by or against a trained fighter they are worse than nothing and much worse than a straight stick the same length.
No. Chimpanzees have been documented to use spears as weapons to kill other animals, but the use of clubs is unknown, beyond a single threat displays against other that aren’t intended to cause actual harm, and in these displays they use anything to hand: leaf litter, twigs, small leafy branches etc.
So there’s a good reason to believe that our ancestors used spears before they used clubs. For a small, relatively defenceless mammal that makes perfect sense. A hominid with a spear gains the ability to stand up to much larger and faster animals. A club doesn’t really give that much of an edge <heh> against animals .
We can probably assume that regimented tactics evolved only after the invention of agriculture, when 1) population sizes became large enough to make them effective and 2) there was enough food surplus to make professional soldiers and regimental leadership an option. HGs just don’t have enough time to spend hours drilling regimental tactics, and the egalitarian nature of HG societies would make it hard to achieve anyway. You need a sargent major figure to force people to undertake what are fairly grueling and dangerous regimental drills. They just aren’t effective when anybody can say “scare you” and walk away at any time. They only work when you know that every individual in the formation is equally committed and trained.
And we know that regimented tactics were used from as early as we have written records. So they probably evolved very soon after the invention of agriculture. So I would say that ~9, 000 years ago would be a fair figure, using standard neolithic weapons such as bows, spears, hand axes and clubs/maces.
Teamwork =/= regimented tactics.
The Highland Scots up to the 18th century were using teamwork in wars, but they were in no sense regimented. They lined up together, then all charged at the enemy lines. Nothing regimented at all.
All thing considered, a spear beats a club 9 times out of 10.
My experience with making walking sticks is that wood doesn’t fall on it’s own until it’s rotten enough to be virtually useless. Cut wood is indispensible to any strenuous use. To my knowledge the best possible cut of wood to make a club from is an uprooted sapling with the business end being where the roots joined the trunk.
I have one of those 2 foot bats you buy at the game.
Makes a nice one handed weapon.