juiced bat article

[Dirty sancho]

does anyone have the link to the wallstreet journal's juiced bat report. and any other research on materials of todays bats. my daughters doing a report.

lmk

thanks
dirty

[Josh#23]

Don't have the link but here's the text.....


On America's Other Diamonds,
Players Try Doctored Bats;
How Bobby Buggs Got an Edge
By CONOR DOUGHERTY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
May 20, 2005; Page W1

Above the country's ballparks, the cloud of scandal darkens. The biggest names on the diamond have been suspected of steroid use. Major-league ballplayers from Seattle to Tampa Bay have gotten 10-day suspensions for using banned substances. And in Georgia, Ronald Priester was slapped with one of the biggest suspensions of all -- a full year.

Ronald who?

Mr. Priester is an amateur softball player, and during a game last year in Lawrenceville, Ga., an umpire confronted him as he ran in from the outfield, saying he suspected one of the team's bats had been modified to make it hit balls farther. Such bats are illegal under the rules of the of the game's overseer, the United States Specialty Sports Association. Mr. Priester -- he says the bat wasn't his but took responsibility for it -- refused to turn it over to the ump for analysis, and was banned from association-sanctioned games.

"Everybody on the team was using it," says the 35-year-old former steelworker. "I just took the fall."

It turns out performance-boosters aren't limited to the big leagues. From weekend squads made up of hypercompetitive executives to ambitious travel teams sponsored by local merchants, some softball players are resorting to underhanded methods. They're mailing their bats and checks to small-time entrepreneurs with Internet aliases and machine shops -- so-called bat doctors. "It's amazing the lengths teams will go to win an $18 trophy," says Joe Morice, a player and manager of Cassie's Italian, a men's softball team in Fairfax, Va.

Bat doctors have devised various procedures to give players that age-old satisfaction of launching a ball over the outfield fence. One method, called "end loading," involves removing the cap on the end of the barrel and adding weight, shifting the bat's balance to give it more momentum when swung. Bat doctors may also use a lathe to shave the inside of a bat's barrel to make it springier, in effect giving the ball an extra boost on contact. Then there's the painting routine -- taking a high-performance bat that isn't allowed for league play and disguising it as a regulation model.

On a chilly May night at the Connecticut Sportsplex in North Branford, men with nicknames like Kookie, Mouse and Bump gathered for twilight games. Hit after hit soared more than 300 feet over the top of the outfield's 16-foot fence. Jim "Jimmy Dogs" Consiglio, the team's sponsor and its part-time catcher, guessed there were a half-dozen doctored bats in his game, though he wouldn't say who might have used them or from which dugout. "Do I care? No," says Mr. Consiglio, 53 years old, whose team lost the game. "It's hard to fault guys for being human."

Regulators and bat-makers are starting to play hardball. Manufacturer Easton Sports recently sent letters to about a dozen suspected bat doctors, telling them they could be held liable if a ball hit by a juiced bat hurts a player. This year, the Amateur Softball Association of America (ASA) will start on-field bat checks at big tournaments. (Officials will use a $2,500 machine that compresses the bat's barrel to measure the wall's stiffness.) The USSSA has posted the names of a handful of ex-bat doctors on its Web site, and it is threatening indefinite playing bans -- most bat doctors are also players -- for those who keep practicing.

Corked Bats

Bat doctoring is nearly as old as stealing second. Baseball and softball players have long attempted to give wood bats extra speed and pop by hollowing them out and filling them with a lighter substance, usually cork. In 2003, major-league slugger Sammy Sosa was found to be swinging a corked bat.

Softball-bat doctoring follows a different trajectory. As pro baseball players continue to use wood, most softball players have switched to aluminum or composite bats. For the past few decades, the drive to doctor these bats was limited: The bats generally hit farther than wood, and gear manufacturers catered to sluggers by making increasingly powerful models. By the beginning of this decade, though, softball bats had become too powerful -- often resulting in longer games with inning after inning of home runs. Last year, the ASA responded by telling makers to limit how fast a regulation softball could fly off their bats in a lab test -- its "98 mph rule." After years of better performance, bats were effectively dampened.

Players sought an edge from guys like Robert Russell. An entomologist by day -- in softball circles, he's known as Bobby Buggs -- Mr. Russell says he got into bat doctoring by accident a few years ago. Disappointed with the performance of a new $500 bat, he hit the garage, removed the bat's end cap and examined its innards. "I'm a very diagnostic individual," he says. He had the barrel shaved down at a machine shop, and discovered it hit balls farther than an unmodified bat did. He posted his findings on the Internet, and was "flooded with requests" to modify other players' bats.

At his height, Mr. Russell says he was getting orders from across the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia. (He wouldn't say how many bats he worked on or how much he charged, but other bat doctors say the biggest practitioners can fill as many as 30 orders a month at about $100 per bat.) The USSSA contacted him two months ago and told him to stop. He did, he says, and now he is focusing on his own softball and apparel line, Evil Sports. "I didn't want to be associated with black-market stuff," says Mr. Russell.

A broader bat-doctor crackdown may prove challenging. About 14 million people play slow-pitch softball, according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, with one-third of those involved in informal pick-up games. The rest play in leagues that may be regulated by one of a number of bodies -- including the ASA, the USSSA, the National Softball Association and the Independent Softball Association. Each group sanctions bats and balls that others may not allow. Easton Sports, for example, makes eight bats that are legal for the USSSA and the ASA, and a ninth allowed for USSSA but not ASA play.

'Not Smoke and Mirrors'

While softball regulators and bat makers don't know how many doctored bats are out there, the problem has become serious enough that the ASA recently commissioned a study on it. Research by Washington State University, which is set to be presented to softball manufacturers on Sunday, showed that balls flew off modified bats from two to eight miles an hour faster, which roughly translates to an extra 15 feet to 55 feet of distance. "This is not smoke and mirrors," says the study's co-author, WSU engineering professor Lloyd Smith.

Many players find the whole idea baffling. In Brooklyn, N.Y., members of the co-ed Williamsburg Softball league can be seen wearing goofy uniforms -- on the Enid's bar team, it's pink shirts and socks -- and sometimes start drinking beer before the first pitch. The league has few equipment rules, and its commissioner, 28-year-old Brooklyn architect Joe Godsy, says he wouldn't think of seeking an edge with a tampered bat. "I figured that was for a complete lunatic," he says. Adds Mitch Torres, a 37-year-old UPS driver who plays for the league's Pourhouse team: "I'm a fanatic, but I wouldn't do anything extreme like that."

Umpires say bat doctoring is getting hard to detect, as bat doctors become increasingly sophisticated. For Brad Crerar, the ASA umpire who officiated Mr. Consiglio's game in Connecticut, the larger worry is that players will get hurt when balls are hit with extra velocity. "It puts everybody on the field at risk," he says. (Injury statistics are inconclusive: U.S. emergency rooms reported about 113,000 softball injuries in 2003, down more than 10% from 2001, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.)

At least some players are backing away. In Chehalis, Wash., Jeremy Witchey said he paid $60 to $90 to bat doctors in North Carolina, Washington and California. The sales manager at a truck-accessories company says he rarely used the bats in games, and says he sold his bats after seeing another hitter smack a line-drive into a pitcher's kneecap. Still, as a pitcher himself, Mr. Witchey says he sees how easy it is to rationalize using one of the bats. "I got to stand out there and get drilled" as opponents hit his pitches hard, he says. "It was kind of like, if I can't beat 'em, join 'em."

[RedSox24]

try a search...it was posted on here a while back....when bobby buggs was around

[Harry]

I posted an article on bats over at the xtreme board.

Here is a link to it. http://xtremesoftball.org/softball/v...asc&highlight=


The original site link is at the top of the post. It's pretty interesting and I think it might be just what she is looking for.

[Dirty sancho]

thanks this is what I needed.......

[PST FRANK 203]

we should delete that because jimmy is my cousin..

[atlis2004]

Originally Posted by PST FRANK 203

we should delete that because jimmy is my cousin..

What is your point?

[HE15MAN]

wow thats an interesting article

[brmurray]

so is bobby buggs no longer hanging around here??

[PST FRANK 203]

Originally Posted by atlis2004

What is your point?

MY POINT?? He is my 2nd cousin who i am close with and think this article should of been given to that person and put to bed.. seriously isnt it old enough??

[Gary19]

Originally Posted by PST FRANK 203

we should delete that because jimmy is my cousin..

Oh well.

[Gary19]

Originally Posted by PST FRANK 203

MY POINT?? He is my 2nd cousin who i am close with and think this article should of been given to that person and put to bed.. seriously isnt it old enough??

Your aunt should have taught him morals.

[atlis2004]

Originally Posted by PST FRANK 203

MY POINT?? He is my 2nd cousin who i am close with and think this article should of been given to that person and put to bed.. seriously isnt it old enough??

Should we delete every thread that offends someone while we are at it? This is a public message board man. Relax a little.

[atlis2004]

Originally Posted by Gary19

Your aunt should have taught him morals.

Dammit Gary!!! I agree with you again!!! This has got to stop!!!

[Banks93]

I didn't want to be associated with black-market stuff," says Mr. Russell.

I just had to laugh at this quote. The guy who was one of the biggest bat doctor's did not want to be part of the black-market. Can you say hand caught in cookie jar.