Spokane Company Making Stronger Laminated Bats -- Claims Its Wooden Club Is More Durable

SPOKANE - They're trying to give new meaning to the phrase "crack of the bat."

It's the sweet sound baseball purists love - white ash coming in perfect contact with the ball.

But when things go wrong, that sound becomes all too literal.

Spokane Valley company Tridiamond Sports has made a mission to whittle down the number of bats an average major-league player breaks a year. And company executives hope to put wood in the hands of every Little Leaguer around.

"We want to make a more durable, more consistent wooden baseball bat," said company member William Stohlton.

These days, the average major-league player breaks 80 bats a season. Hillerich & Bradsby, which manufactures Louisville Sluggers, sends out 70 to 90 bats per player each year. The Seattle Mariners spend $54,000 a year on 1,800 bats - all because the physics of the typical wooden baseball bat don't always hold up to the pressure of the game.

In ideal circumstances, a player will hit the ball at the bat's longitudinal nodal point. That's the technical term for the bat's "sweet spot" - the ideal point on the bat for slamming into the ball. On a 35-inch, 32-ounce bat, the sweet spot is at 27.3 inches from the handle end of the bat.

At that contact, the ball will sail farther and the player will feel no sting in the hands from vibrations shimmying down the bat barrel.

But if the player hits farther away from the sweet spot, the ball may not go as far, which means an infielder may catch it and throw a player out, or the bat will break.

"Now you have a broken bat, no base hit and not a very happy camper," said Donald Bender, civil engineering professor and director of Washington State University's Wood Materials and Engineering Lab.

Last fall Tridiamond enlisted Bender's help to develop a more durable wooden bat.

Bender used computer models and machines to study the pressure the bat receives when it smacks into fast-moving baseballs. He found that most wooden bats break below the label where the wood begins to taper into a V-pattern.

So Tridiamond developed a bat made from six pieces of wood, hand-selected for the highest grain quality.

"We decided on wood because of its tradition. We're all over 50. We all grew up with wood. We would very much like to see the NCAA colleges go back to wood," said company co-owner Joe Sample. "The only way to ever accomplish that is to engineer a bat that's durable."

The Tridiamond bat is 20 percent stronger than a typical one-piece wooden bat, which can't be microscopically examined for every knot and grain imperfection inside.

The bats weigh the same, but the Tridiamond cost $50 rather than the typical $30 for wood bats.

Tridiamond has sent out dozens of bats to minor-league teams across the U.S., from Seattle to Atlanta. Local colleges and high-school players are giving the bat a try.

The American Legion Baseball League will be using the bats during its 4th of July tournament.

"We're doing it for the nostalgia of the wooden bats. It's very unique. Most high-school players haven't even played with wooden bats," league commissioner Dennis Thompson said. "If these are as durable as a metal bat then certainly we could consider making a statement about using wooden bats."

For more than two decades high schools and college teams have used metal bats because they can't afford to cough up money to replace constant broken or cracked bats.

"An aluminum bat might last a kid his whole high-school career. You could break two wooden bats a game," said Central Valley High School Coach Ed Garcia.

But metal bats have a greater reflex, or trampoline effect, that springs the ball farther and faster than a wooden bat would. That's a safety hazard for pitchers, who have little reflex time to move out of the way of a 90-mph ball.

A metal bat is also less likely to crack when the batter misses the sweet spot.

"A metal bat is much more forgiving of a ball hit imperfectly," Bender said.

It also gives the game a hitter's advantage. Studies show a home run hit of 380 feet with a wooden bat would have gone 415 feet with an aluminum bat.

"I've got kids hitting 400 to 500 feet with aluminum," Garcia said. "A wooden bat would give the advantage back to the pitcher again. We wouldn't have these 20- or 21-run games."

For those using the bats, like WSU and Gonzaga, players have mixed reviews.

"Some of the guys said it's like swinging a log," said Jeff Bopp, equipment manager for the WSU Cougars, who set up an indoor batting cage for players to practice with Tridiamond bats. After more than a decade of using metal bats, players like the flexibility and the driving distance of the metal bat. "If it was lighter it may be something they would be willing to use."

Gonzaga has broken one of the two bats they were given.

"It was swung quite a bit," catcher George Arnott said. But, he added, "It's a solid bat. It allows you to make more errors and not break it."

While Tridiamond waits to hear from the Major League Rules Committee on the bat's approval, some baseball bigwigs won't budge.

"We'll never use it. We don't use composite bats in the major leagues," said Scott Gilbert, clubhouse equipment manager for the Seattle Mariners.

Others said it lives up to its promise.

"They're really good bats. They're much sturdier than regular bats," said East Valley Coach Kurt Krauth.

Krauth's players on the other hand have stars in their eyes.

"They don't like it when I make them use wooden bats," he said. "The ball doesn't go as far."