How did they "recertify" those metal bats

jbo911

jbo911

Super Moderator
Staff member
BigWhiffa said:
i have my dads old books from when he coached our church softball team. we found them in a filing cabinet in the basement a good number of years ago. one day i looked through them just to see how good the old man was. the field they played on was the exact same field we play on today. early 90's was when he stopped. i noticed very quickly that very few hr's were hit season to season. by either teams.

now it could be just church you say, of course noone hit in church. i coached church for 10 years and we used up our 3 hr's pretty regularly. remember, back then there were no HR rules because there was no need for them.

I'd contend that hr's were not as frequent even with aluminum and blue dots as they were in the 2000's or even today with the balls we have. Sure you had the Steeles teams and the major teams who were all hulks of men smashing 30 hr's a game.

when you have guys today who are hitting hr's that would of never come close in the 80's and 90's you get more egos. and with more egos you get more of the goofy **** like hitting middle.
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Egos is a good word, because some of them just become dbs when they get butt hurt or disrespected in their eyes.
 
BigWhiffa

BigWhiffa

Underwear Researcher
lukeamdman said:
BTW this debate will never end. You older gentlemen had your previous generation saying the same thing about you. "Aluminum bats have ruined the game and make it so anyone can hit HRs. They should bring back wood bats."

Rinse, repeat.
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you can find early 90's mens slow pitch on youtube. they are using blue dots and aluminum bats. the difference is staggering. they also didn't have much in the way of arc limits which also makes it a bit harder to hit dingers.
 
B

baseballfrk806

Coach
There is absolutely a difference with those composite bats when you compare them to old school aluminum and wood bats..

It always amazed me when they had a wood bat tourney, how many of these "mashers" sucked. But put a composite bat in their hand and its amazing the difference. They become 300 ft monsters.

So all of that to say that the ability level or talent level required with today's bats is far less then that of aluminum and wood before that. This ability to "miss" a ball and hit it 300 ft didn't exist with aluminum or wood.

I think that is the biggest difference you see now.
 
hitsone

hitsone

Well-Known Member
Well when I first started Slo-pitch, late 70's,we still had a couple of wood bats because they were cheaper than the aluminum pipes that were just coming out.
I recently umped at a field we used to play on then, I couldn't believe how small that field is. Back then it seemed OK. Now with todays bats it would be a farce as almost anyone with a decent bat would be spraying the street. good thing it was being used by an E rec league.
Point is the game has changed with technology and we have to change with the times. I armour up and I would like to see more players doing the same. there will not be any more attempts at recertification, we have the compression test now.
 
Hiltz

Hiltz

Built for comfort
smoke said:
Carl Rose,Wendel Rickart, etc..... they were the home run hitters, thats why they had bat companies making bats for them, dont really remember any bats named after base hitters, I could be wrong.
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I just bought a scuba gear bag with 8 aluminum bats for $50. One of them is a 33oz Bruce Meade TPS. If he actually used that bat, he earned every homerun he hit, regardless of ball used.
 
sleepin4matty

sleepin4matty

Management Material
The big difference in old softball is the size of the sweetspot on bats. the players haven't gotten that much better but the equipment makes a ton of those balls that would have been miss hits into rockets. Name one older bat with a 14" barrel :)
 
Hiltz

Hiltz

Built for comfort
Hiltz said:
I just bought a scuba gear bag with 8 aluminum bats for $50. One of them is a 33oz Bruce Meade TPS.
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sleepin4matty said:
The big difference in old softball is the size of the sweetspot on bats. the players haven't gotten that much better but the equipment makes a ton of those balls that would have been miss hits into rockets. Name one older bat with a 14" barrel :)
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33oz Bruce Meade TPS.
 
hitsone

hitsone

Well-Known Member
Hiltz said:
Maybe the 12" models. This one has a sweetspot the size of a golf ball, it's massive.
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LOL, reminds me of my school coach having us hit golf balls off a T with a broom handle.
Whatever I learned doing that has left me.
 
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