The NCAA has announced that they are placing a moratorium for composite bats according to a report from Baseball America’s Aaron Fitt (LINK). The issue about the composite bats aroused during the Tennessee and Vanderbilt season ending series where multiple homers by the Volunteers were hit over the wall at ridiculous distances. Tim Corbin was adamant that Tennessee was using hot bats to hit those homers including getting a bat confiscated. The SEC Tournament Conference Call which took place after that series focused on the issue.
The way that you would make a bat hot is to “roll the bat” by putting it into a vice like device and put pressure on the bat with rollers making it “used.” The rolling causes the bat to make it act older. (Video available here.) An older composite bat has shown in studies to have better performance over a brand new composite bat. You can check out a detailed report on accelerated bat break in by clicking here.
I was in Omaha for the College World Series and had a suspicion that one of the school’s in the final eight was using “hot bats” but I was never able to confirm anything as many people though that team was not using the type of bats in question. I can still remember a long home run off the end of the bat that should have been a weak flyout to right field but ended up in the second to last row of the right field bleachers.
6 comments
1) Tim Corbin was on this issue all season. He forbid his players from using composite bats and complained that Cal was using a juiced bat in February.
2) The NCAA did confiscate a number of bats prior to the CWS. IIRC, they tested bats before each round of the NCAA Tournament.
They didn’t confiscate them all….
Who says the team in question didn’t roll the bat after the NCAA took the bats at the CWS?
Oh, I know. I was just trying to point out that the NCAA wasn’t *totally* ignorant of the issue.
Good for Tim Corbin! I hope this gets approved and the NCAA bans composites permanently. These bats have ruined slowpitch softball and they are now ruining fastpitch and baseball from college all the way down to little league. The whole concept of a bat getting hotter over time after it is manufactured to meet a certain standard is ridiculous. Add in the fact that composite bats can be easily altered by rolling or shaving them and now the playing field has been tilted drastically in favor of those willing to cheat. Not to mention that fielders are in danger of being seriously hurt or even killed (it has happened numerous times in slowpitch already). It’s time to level the playing field, put the game back in the hands of the players, and ban composite bats for good!
Agreed Adam,
I have been shown the bat test and it is only tested before it is used so the composites get by on that.
I attended the UT-Vandy series last spring that brought this to a head and it was crazy to see the HR’s that were hit by the supposed “doctored” bats.
Coach Corbin is pretty thorough when he brings something forward and I am glad to see that the NCAA has taken some action on this issue.
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