July 27, 2005
Bigger Bats
Jim Caple takes replicas of vintage bats to ballparks to see the reactions of hitters.
We gave our brother-in-law a 1927 Babe Ruth replica bat for his 50th birthday. It was heavy, but perfectly balanced. Just holding it made you feel like you could hit 60 home runs. But I agree with Caple's conclusion:
"The handle is the biggest thing that bugs me," Richie Sexson said. "It's so big and thick. I don't know how he used it. But I don't think they were throwing 95 miles an hour back then, either."
This was a frequent observation. Players would grab the bats, hold them, swing them, marvel at the thick handles and occasionally praise the balance. But they would also say that it was too heavy to swing in a game and that old-time pitchers couldn't possibly throw as hard as today's pitchers if batters were successful with such clubs.
I think they're right -- the bats go a long way toward explaining how different the game must have been -- but not everyone agrees.
Posted by David Pinto at
10:50 AM
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In his most recent Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James attributes part of the recent rise in home runs to the thin handles on bats. The combination of pitchers throwing hard and hitters swinging hard certainly seems to add up to lots of long balls. I suppose that's not as sexy as steroids, but it probably accounts for a lot more of the home runs in the past 20 years.
My only wish was that Caple should have taken baseballs used back then along with him as well. That would have given Sexson and others more of a complete picture of what Ruth, Cobb and Jackson were hitting. The balls back then were a lot more loosely wound which made it harder to hit homeruns.
