Metal Versus Wood Bat
Though a wood bat is legal in NCAA competition, players overwhelmingly prefer and use a metal bat. The metal bat was implemented into college baseball in 1975. Use of a metal bat is somewhat controversial amongst baseball aficionados. Supporters of an aluminum or composite bat note how it can increase offensive performance, as the speed of a ball off a metal bat is generally faster than off a wood bat. Those against metal, and for wood, would argue how a metal bat is not safe to use, and that a metal bat doesn't prepare players for the next level, as pro baseball uses a wood bat exclusively. In the 2011 season the NCAA changed the requirements for a metal bat, reducing the maximum allowed exit speed in a way that is said to produce a feeling more like a wood bat. As a result in 2011 there were fewer overall "long" drives or home runs than in the past.
Read more about this topic: College Baseball
Famous quotes containing the words metal and/or wood:
“And, indeed, is there not something holy about a great kitchen?... The scoured gleam of row upon row of metal vessels dangling from hooks or reposing on their shelves till needed with the air of so many chalices waiting for the celebration of the sacrament of food. And the range like an altar, yes, before which my mother bowed in perpetual homage, a fringe of sweat upon her upper lip and the fire glowing in her cheeks.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“He will not idly dance at his work who has wood to cut and cord before nightfall in the short days of winter; but every stroke will be husbanded, and ring soberly through the wood; and so will the strokes of that scholar’s pen, which at evening record the story of the day, ring soberly, yet cheerily, on the ear of the reader, long after the echoes of his axe have died away.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)