Why don't baseball bats have "springs"?

Factual Questions
1

Inspired by this thread, I thought I’d ask a question that has made me curious for some time.

Baseball bats are (in the Louisville Slugger tradition, at least) a single piece of crafted wood. A consequence of that is the “sting” referred to in the linked thread when the ball is hit not quite sweetly.

Cricket bats have solved this problem, in a general sense. The solution is difficult to describe in words (and I can’t find a photo), but I will try.

Cricket bats are not one piece of wood. The blade is a single piece of willow, but it has a deep V notch in the top to received an appropriately fashioned handle which extends some distance up from the blade proper, and down into the notch (or splice).

The handle is made of a number of elements of cane and some thin, flat pieces of rubber (called springs) all bound together. I hasten to say that these springs are nothing like the coiled pieces of metal we normally associate with the word. They function more like leaf springs in car suspension, but they don’t look anything like them, either.

The purpose of this structure of the handle is to absorb shock. The handle is circular in cross section, and if viewed in that orientation, one would see lines across the handle at approximately the positions where the equator and tropics would be on a map.

These lines are the rubber springs that run the length of the handle from top to splice, and (again looking cross-sectionally) are parallel to the front of the blade.

As I say, the effect of the handle’s structure is to absorb shock. The handle is quite rigid when merely held in the hands and an attempt is made to distort it with ordinary physical strength, but has just enough “give” when striking a ball to relieve the batsman of the constant sting of mistimed shots.

So to my question. I can’t think why baseball bats do not have the equivalent of this.

Some possibilities.
Cricket batsmen, with luck, will strike a much greater number of balls in a given game than baseball batters will; it may be that shock absorption is more necessary in cricket.

The springs in the handle do not impair the capacity of the batsman to seriously belt the ball to kingdom come, so that can’t be it.

Cricket balls are no less hard than baseballs, so that can’t be it either.

Clearly there is an issue with baseball’s tradition and the present state of the rules, but those are merely “just because” answers.

The cricket bat, because of the flat striking surface of the blade part, will always be held so that the ball is struck with the springs in the proper orientation to maximise shock absorption. But in baseball, kids are taught to hold the bat with the label up so as to orient the bat’s wood grain properly, so the problem is not born of differences in the shape of the bat.

Is there a reason why this solution has not been adopted?

2

If you put springs in a bat, you would destroy all hitting records and/or create the need to move outfield fences out a couple of hundred feet.

I know next to nothing about cricket but they are totally different sports.

3

I’m not sure springs add much to the beltability of the ball, but bear in mind baseball went from wooden bats to aluminium bats without an eyeblink. Cricket has refused to go Al.

And I know cricket and baseball are different, but they still are all about hitting a smallish ball as hard and straight as you can.

I was just curious as to why baseball has stuck with a relatively primitive stick while cricket got all fancy with the handle to stop shock. Seemed like a good idea that could be generalised to me.

4

Major League Baseball does not allow aluminum bats, AFAIK.

5

Excuse me. In professional baseball there are no aluminum bats. There are only wood bats. Aluminum is allowed in non-professional leagues only for the cost factor. And, there are is a movement to ban all aluminum bats for safety reasons. A hit ball leaves and aluminum bat with a greater velocity which is a danger to the pitcher. If aluminum bats were allowed in professional baseball you could throw out the record book. In existing stadiums a MLB game would just be Home Run Derby.

6

Not just the majors; all professional baseball. And most college baseball. Metal bats are for sissies, just like the designated hitter rule.

7

Re Al bats - ignorance cured. I had heard of people being killed by Al bats (pitchers, mostly, in the line of fire) and got the obviously false impression that this was at the Major League level. Hence my impression that baseball was relatively open to technological advances, like tennis or golf (I supposed).

If springs made a difference to performance, then old records are a non-trivial reason to keep the old stick the way it has been for generations.

Thank you.

8

One possible reason for the value of the handle design of cricket bats is the diference in tactics and use of the bat. In cricket, the ball is bowled and bounces once before the batsman strikes it. This affords the bowler a much greater range of techniques to make life for the batsman miserable. Balls can do all manner of difficult to predict things on the bounce. Hence the batsman will find himself using a large fraction of the bat’s blade to strike the ball. The chance of a jarring strike to the ball is much greater, and hence damping in the handle much more appreciated. Also, a batsman in cricket will be striking the ball many many times (at least he hopes so.) A well struck ball allows the batsman the chance to play the ball again, rather than baseball where it is the opposite.

Many things are pretty similar however. A cricket ball is only 10% heavier than a baseball ball, and balls speeds are compariable. Top speed for both sports is about 100 miles per hour. However in cricket a bowler may aim directly at the batsman, and indeed is rewarded for hitting him in some circumstances. So batsmen really do use the bat to defend themselves as well as play the baall.

9

Personally, I would imagine that in baseball slamming the ball is of the most importance. Anything which absorbs shock would simply reduce the speed of the ball as it leaves the bat.

Since a cricket bat is, essentially, a big wind block, I suspect that the goal in cricket is much more to aim the ball than to really slam it. Someone interested in distance over accuracy isn’t going to choose to use possibly the least aerodynamic shape in the world.

I’ll also note that unless you’re doing it wrong, hitting a baseball with a baseball bat doesn’t sting at all. It’s a hefty chunk of wood, so the simple factor of its weight and inertia is sufficient to fully take and cover the force of the incoming ball.

10

One thing you should know about American baseball. It’s steeped in tradition and change is generally not welcomed. Shoot, it’s been almost 40 years since the AL adopted the designated hitter rule and people still argue about it.

11

Interesting observation, Sage Rat. I have to say, though, that the experience of hitting a ball with a cricket bat reveals no sense of the bat’s being like a wind block. Any practical difference between the two is, I am sure, based on weight and balance, and the different biomechanics resulting from the contrasting postures in which they are typically held.

It is true that in cricket, there is much technique involved - rolling the wrists and so on - to achieve field placement, but that while accurate placement is important, so is power. Watch any first class batsman belt a six off the field and it is clear that it is useful to have the Big Ding in your arsenal as a batsman.

The corked bat idea is, like the helium filled football, based on an intuitive but wrong understanding of the physics involved. But a sprung cricket bat is time-tested to be able to produce big hits. I would love to know if springing a baseball bat would result in a diminution of power, and whether de-springing a cricket bat would increase its power. Or potentially the reverse. It may be that the potential lag in the bat coming into contact with the ball induced by a spring may in fact amplify the power of the stroke in the same way that nunchuks gain from “whippiness”.

Calling Adam and Jamie…

12

If you drop a rubber ball on a rubber mat it bounces less high than it would if you dropped it on a hard wood or concrete surface. Springiness is only an advantage if you have it on one side of the equation. The bat is meant to and ideal as a rigid object. Your ideal would be a solid bar of titanium, not something with some cool spring system.

It would be interesting to test but I’m fairly sure that you can’t improve upon the bat except by improving its rigidity.

13

We are talking about cricket here - a sport which has existed since (at least) 1550 and whose arcania are legend (cricket commentators talk non-stop for 5 days of a test match - they drag all this history up regularly). Dennis Lilley tried to use an aluminium bat in '79, but was given short shrift. Even the Gray Nicholls Excalibur bat (a sloping shoulder wooden bat) was controversial when Lance Cairns (NZ all-rounder) used it to smack 6 sixes off 10 balls in 1983, one of them one-handed. Of course, sales of said bat went nuts for a while.

The cane “sprung” handle was invented in the 1880’s by a student of Brunel, and is obviously more comfortable than previous handles (evidenced by the fact that it is still the standard design). I think that the length of time at the crease and number of balls faced is the main difference between cricket and baseball in this regard.

Si

14

There is no crying in baseball. You don’t complain if the bat stings your hands. If you did you would be a sissy.

15

Well, it might be possible to add to the bat’s speed by storing energy applied during the swing - as is the case with a golf club.
I think the answer to the OP lies in points already mentioned:

  1. As compared to Cricket, a baseball batter has better opportunity to control what part of the bat makes contact with the ball.
  2. Baseball (for some very sound reasons) resists innovation. Changes to the rules about materials for bats would for a certainty be strongly criticized.
  3. There’s no perceived need. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
16

Add #4, previously mentioned: it only stings when you do it wrong. Professionals don’t often do it wrong.

17

I thought I covered that with #1.

18

“Ping!”… so non-basebally.

19

That’s at least in part because the NL hasn’t adopted it. How about a bit of nitroglycerin smeared on the hitting surface of the bat? That would really give the ball some zing!

20

Baseball is played on a smaller field and the players wear gloves, making it easier to catch batted balls. Also the distance a ball has to travel for a home run is further than that for a six in cricket. This means that it is more important to hit a baseball hard than it is for a cricketer. Springs in a bat would necessarily mean the ball is not hit as hard and anyone who did so would be at a massive disadvantage. In cricket the batsmen is more interested in placing the ball rather than hitting it as hard as he can.