I don’t think spitballs were ever legal. I always kind of liked Perry, it just sort of frosts my ass that a guy greasin’ pitches is never guilty of anything more than gamesmanship, while a guy who gets busted for a juiced bat is a cheater. Oh, the injustice of it all!!!
I heard an interview on the radio today with a guy in the Chicago media. According to this guy, no one in the media likes Sosa, and his whole nice-guy act is a facade. I don’t know if that’s true.
I saw the segment on SportsCenter where Buck Showalter demonstrated how to cork a bat. The end result was a bat that weighed about an ounce less than a regulation bat (31 ounces as opposed to 32, for example). I got the impression players cork the bat not due to any “springiness” of the cork, or anything like that; corking is done to reduce the bat’s weight so you can swing faster. Thus, you have a longer bat, with a longer barrel, that weighs less. I dunno that one ounce would make a ton of difference, but apparently some hitters believe it does.
True 'nuff, but we’re arguing principle here, aren’t we? Suppose it was Steinbrenner as comish, with Nomar’s bat and 10 games left in the season, with the Sox up 2 games on the Yanks?
1, Andro is legal in MLB. 2, McGwire also lifted weights like a madman. 3, McGwire hit 49 home runs his rookie year, meanwhile Sosa really came from nowhere.
Hell, why not just buy a new bat? Seems like a lot of work just to make it lighter but longer…
Yes, andro was/is? legal in only basebal, but it still left a bad impression on his record.
Sosa on the other hand did something blatanly illegal. I can only begin to imagine what kind of impression this will leave on him when he retires and what effect this will have on his chances for the Hall of Fame.
Beats me. Unless there are exactly defined specs for the bats used in the majors.
Thanks, **dantheman[\b]. Great link.
preview, schmuck, preview…
You’re welcome. It’s also worth noting that for a while, the umps didn’t enforce the rule. Then, when it was enforced, some pitchers who had basically made their livings with the wet ball were “grandfathered” into continuing to use it. IIRC.
This site http://m-5.eng.uml.edu/umlbrc/A%20Study%20of%20the%20Barrel%20Constructions%20of%20Baseball%20Bats%20by%20Fa….pdf suggests that there is an advantage of ~1% in velocity/distance for using a corked bat, based on both computational and experimental methods, at the cost of having bats break much easier. The impact of 1% over a season/career? Dunno
ESPN reports that the other 76 bats confiscated were legal with no sign of cork. Does this change the mind of anyone here who’s been bashing Sammy? In my mind it does lend more credence to his claim that it was a practice bat he used accidentally in a game.
I think this does show that the bat he used was probably just a practice bat, but why was the corked bat taped at the knob. From what I have heard, baseball players only tape the knobs of bats that they use during games. Why would he go to the trouble of taping the knob if it was only a practice bat?
Remember, he had just come off the disabled list and had struck out 8 times in 2 games. He was pressing. Perhaps he was looking for some kind of edge.
The fact that his other bats were clean supports the idea that his great stats over the years were probably not cork-aided, but it doesn’t mean that he wasn’t trying to deliberately cheat in the game yesterday. He could have been trying to break out of his slump by using the corked bat.
Interesting note: that page also says that there is a mandatory 3-game suspension for using a doctored bat.
A few comments.
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I have seen some stuff written that the advantage of the cork bat is that you can swing faster and thus are better able to hit the ball. Not necessarily that the hit ball goes farther but that you hit the ball more often. That would be a benefit to batting average and number of home runs hit in a season.
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Using a lighter bat at practice before the game may help him not tire himself out before the game. So there might be some sort of legitimate reason to have the lighter bat before practice.
- I am not sure that it really lends much credence to this. If I was going to cheat in this manor I would not have a bunch of bats altered I would only have a few or just one. Having a bunch of altered bats laying around is asking for trouble.
This article in Slate explains the intent of corking a bat, and claims that it not only doesn’t add distance, but actually decreases it a bit, since the gain in bat-swinging speed is offset by the decrease in mass. As for the benefit of swinging faster = better chance to hit the ball, the article calculates that a corked bat adds about 5/1000ths of a second extra time in which to swing, which doesn’t seem like it would make a noticeable difference.
From the article:
5/1000ths of a second is a big difference. We’re talking about the major leagues here; the ball goes from the pitcher’s hand to the catcher’s glove in a quarter of a second, and the margin between a swing making contact and not is a small fraction of that.
So what if the other bats weren’t corked, he wasn’t using them.