The other unstated assumption we’re all making here is that MLB players would actually care whether corking a bat affords any true advantage to the hitter. Baseball, perhaps more than any other sport, is crammed full of folk wisdom that’s as wrong as it can be, and yet is unquestioningly accepted by the majority of players, managers, executives, and fans.
You could present all the evidence in the world to the contrary, including 27 8x10 color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explainin’ what it was, and the substantial percentage of MLB players who think a corked bat helps a hitter would never believe it, any more than managers believe it’s a bad idea to save your top reliever for 9th inning save situations, or to bunt or steal bases in most circumstances, etc. “Everybody knows” that corking a bat is an advantage – that’s as far as the critical thinking on the subject goes in most dugouts.
I was thinking along the same lines when I watched the show.
They used a machine that swung 2 different bats at 60 mph.
One bat weighed less than the other.
The lighter bat did not hit the ball as hard.
Duh.
Those guys knew how this test was going to come out before hand given the constraints that they put on the test. How easy would it have been to have a batter use the two bats?
Before I saw the show, and read the links in this discussion, I had always thought that the bat weight remained the same. I thought “corking” was an outdated term for something much more sophisticated today. For example, a small sliding wieght inside the cavity.
As for them not showing how to cork a bat, they cut the bat in half and mounted it on a plaque at the end of the show showing a solid cork center in the barrel of the bat extending to the end cap of wood that they replaced.
This whole myth could have very very well been contrived.