MLB and Forest Service Team Up to Reduce
Frequency of Shattered Bats
According to Louisville Slugger, one of the nation's oldest and most well-known producer of wood baseball bats, it takes nearly 40,000 trees to produce one season's worth of baseball bats and the company alone produces 1.6 million wood bats each year!
So it's no surprise that
the US Forest Service has decided to team up with Major League Baseball in
order to ensure that we preserve as many bats as possible.
U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the results of innovative research by the U.S. Forest Service, and funded by MLB, that will result in significantly fewer shattered baseball bats.
"This innovative
research by the U.S. Forest Service will make baseball games safer for players
and fans across the nation," said Secretary Vilsack. "The U.S. Forest
Products Laboratory has once again demonstrated that we can improve uses for
wood products across our nation in practical ways — making advancements that
can improve quality of life and grow our economy."
Testing and analyzing
thousands of shattered Major League bats, U.S. Forest Service researchers at
the Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) developed changes in manufacturing that
decreased the rate of shattered maple bats by more than 50 percent since 2008.
While the popularity of maple bats is greater today than ever before, the
number of shattered bats continues to decline.
The joint Safety and
Health Advisory Committee of Major League Baseball and the Major League
Baseball Players Association began working to address the frequency of bats
breaking into multiple pieces five years ago. FPL wood experts looked at every
broken Major League bat from July to September during the 2008 MLB season.
The research team found
that inconsistency of wood quality, primarily the manufacturing detail
"slope of grain," for all species of wood used in Major League bat
manufacture was the main cause of broken bats. Also, low-density maple bats
were found to not only crack but shatter into multiple pieces more often than
ash bats or higher-density maple bats. Called multiple-piece failure, shattered
bats can pose a danger on the field and in the stands.
Slope of grain refers to
the straightness of the wood grain along the length of a bat. Straighter grain
lengthwise means less likelihood for breakage.
Read more at the USDA Forest Service.