Vanderbilt baseball Coach Tim Corbin saw a lot of home runs this season.
Not many of them were hit by his Commodores.
But as Corbin focused on the subject of composite and "doctored" bats this spring, he became one of the nation's most outspoken coaches on the issue. Altered bats came to a head for Corbin and the Commodores during their final regular-season series against visiting Tennessee. Cody Hawn, one of seven players Vanderbilt faced who hit 20 or more homers this season, hit an opposite-field shot that cleared the 35-foot left-field wall at Hawkins Field during the series finale. Earlier in the three-game set, Blake Forsythe hit a ball that traveled an estimated 500 feet.
Now, the issue has come to the forefront of the NCAA's signature baseball event — the College World Series in Omaha, Neb. On Friday before the CWS opened on Saturday, NCAA officials conducted inspections of bats of all eight participating teams.
Continue reading at The Tennessean.
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Comments » 21
beachvol1 writes:
Need to go to wood..these bats they are using now are just weapons...
BigOrangeJeff writes:
They need to do change things before some pitcher gets killed.
jakethevolguy writes:
College should be like the pros and use only wooden bats. That would help eliminate bat doctoring, unless you consider the pine tar issue.
nashvol writes:
Here's the real story.
College baseball is the showcase for the metal & composite bat manufacturers to display their product to the younger players & leagues, which is where they make all of their enormous profits. Going to wood bats, which everyone seems to agree is the logical move from a baseball standpoint, (but not from a profit standpoint) would kill this youth cash cow for the manufacturers.
Cost to the user is no longer a factor in this argument. Because of the high prices charged for metal & composite bats, there is no question that using wood is financially feasible to any level team. (How many little-leaguers could break a wooden bat anyway?)
The much desired and highly logical move back to wood bats will never happen as long as the colleges are in the bat manufacturers pockets.
The NCAA should buck up and take on this issue. Metal & composite bats are
dangerous. They skew the game, they skew the stats, they handcuff the pitchers.
Vol4ever_1 writes:
They skew stays and handcuff pitchers and for CTR, gave excuse for getting rid of a good coach in CFC. We finished last in hitting but hit a great deal of HR's and CTR looks like he knows what he is doing. Funny.
SomeGuy writes:
Ban all non-wooden bats. Metal and composite bats are a travesty to the game and completely change the game in a bad way. The same goes for softball where the pitcher is only about 35 feet away from the batter when she finishes her pitch and due to the prevalence of the short game the 3B is often even closer to the batter. Baseball and softball would be a lot better if wooden bats were to be mandated. Don't even think about trying to mandate maximum performance features for non-wooden bats; cheating is just too easy and too tempting.
TommyJack writes:
Go back to wood. Don't give me the too expensive bidness.
vol4gzus writes:
You will have the environmentalist go balistic on save the trees for bats campaign. How about save the players as we all have seen either first hand or on tv the videos of players getting hurt by a ball traveling back at them at 100+mph.
vol4gzus writes:
ballistic not one l as in my prior post.
Futurecoach16 writes:
Ok, before people get the wrong idea about how fast the ball really comes off these bats, here is a little information. All high school and metal bats are -3s. This means that the weight of the bat is 3 units less than the length, i.e. 33" 30 oz. These bats HAVE, I repeat HAVE to be BESR (Ball Exit Speed Ratio) certified. This certification means that the ball does not leave the bat faster than 97 mph. This is the true for composite and metal bats. Here are a couple of links link to help better explain it.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Bat-Certifi...(BESR)&id=184048
http://www.beapro.com/bat.care.aspx?c=5
murrayvol writes:
What happens when we run out of wood?
TommyJack writes:
Plant trees, grow jobs.
richvol writes:
I really would like to see baseball get rid of any kind of artificial bat at ALL levels of play. The homerun hitter used to be something special...now anyone can hit homers with these bats.
Off the subject,I hated it when they allowed the designated hitter too. It took a lot of interesting situations and strategy out of the game when they did that.
The league promoters worry about the games being too long and boring. They were alot more fun to watch when they didn't change pitchers every five minutes and drag the games out forever. The great pitchers of old weren't pulled every time an opposing team scored a couple of runs. As a matter of fact a lot of the time they settled down and pitched great games. That they got to hit was part and parcel of the managers decision to let them stay in the game or not. Now it doesn't matter.
4IDVOL writes:
I cannot speak for the quality of the lumber being used in modern wood bats. I can say that the metal and composite bats are dangerous. They are very dangerous in the hands of powerful hitters. Yes, there is a mathematical formula that probably dictates how fast a ball comes off a particular bat. But, when that bat is tampered with, the formula goes out the window. So, now you have to inspect every bat to ensure that it isn't tampered with. Most of the time, when a wooden bat does break, it simply cracks. Yes, there are times when splinters fly, but those instances are far less common than balls coming off a metal bat at an increased speed.
Besides, like the one poster put it, wood bats would be much better in terms of career development, anyway. These days, a kid starts using a metal or composite bat when he begins tee-ball. He uses that same type of bat until he gets out of college. Then, he is suddenly expected to shift to a wood bat at the minor league level. There are reasons why professional baseball hasn't gone to metal or composite bats. Those reasons have always been safety and competitiveness.
ktm589 writes:
You guys missed to reason for this story!!!! It was Vanderbutt saying the vols cheated by using altered bats!!!!
bnakk#240693 writes:
The extent of my "give a phooey" about college baseball is when it hear that freaking "Ping" when watching ESPN and see some hit that should have been a bloop single clear the wall like it has a rocket strapped to its butt. College baseball is a JOKE.
feathersax writes:
The Whiney-Dores from Peabody...forever looking for excuses. Nevertheless, I despise metal bats PERIOD!
PrideOfTheSouthlandBand writes:
Hold on, 500 feet? Good god he is a corn fed youngin.
pdhuff#552644 writes:
Fly over East Tenn and see if any trees are left.
Intheknow30 writes:
Corbin has preached concerns about this for at least a couple of years. As far as I am aware no one tampered with bats at UT. But according to corbin, georgia had rubber mallets lying around their batting cage when he went down there. He said that as a member of the rules comittee, he was trying to make a new set of specifications for metal bats in college. To make then act more like a wood bat. I like this idea so much more than stealing the wood that would be going to minor leaguers, who really need it.
And for clarification BESR is a ratio, simply put, that describes the efficiency of the ball bat collision. and it is based off of the best of a set of high quality wood bats.
heres a good link.
http://www.kettering.edu/~drussell/ba...
Intheknow30 writes:
And I did calculations on Blakes homerun. I was there and saw it. I had it where the least it could have traveled was 520'.
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