Hitting Tips
Major league ball players are constantly telling us that our Sam Bat is the best baseball bat made today. Some of these fellows - Barry Bonds and Alfonso Soriano for example - truly know a thing or two about bats and how to use them. A bat doesn't look awkward in their hands.
Hitting a baseball with a wooden bat involves a learning process that professional hitters go through. There is more to it than long sessions of swinging and tinkering with mechanics, more adjusting and swinging, and so on. It is something ball players develop a feel for. There are only a few solid things anyone needs to know before stepping up to the plate.
When the label is facing up (or the opposite, when the label is at the bottom of the bat, facing the plate) you will automatically make contact with the ball on the bats strongest surface. This is important. When teaching hitting, professional instructors explain grain direction in wood with the help of a stack of letter envelopes. If you strike the flat side of the envelopes against your hand [diagram A] you see how they offer little resistance. The same procedure using the edges of the envelopes [diagram B] produces a remarkably different result. Like the envelopes, the composition of wood gives it an impressive strength against the grain. The Sam Bat label - and the grain of the wood - helps you find the "sweet spot" on your bat. Hitting the baseball squarely on the sweet spot will help you reach the fences.
Diagram A Diagram B
The most proficient major league hitters are "zoned in" and the sweet spot of their bats consistently meets the ball. The sweet spot on a wood bat is only about four inches long, the width of your hand. If you are swinging a metal bat you won't easily sense when you are hitting the ball just right, meaning, on the sweet spot. Before switching to wood bats you might want to test your own ability to consistently hit the sweet spot. Place an eight-inch long strip of white surgical tape lengthwise on the barrel of your metal bat. With a felt pen make a vertical line on the tape the width of two fingers from the end of the barrel, then four inches further along mark another line - between these lines is the sweet spot of your bat. The balls that strike it will mark the tape. When the ends of the tape remain nice and white and the middle section is black with hits you are ready to start hitting with wood. Being zoned in will save you a pile of money because you won't splinter so many wood bats.
Incidentally, maple bats - or practically any wood product that has to stand up to punishing use - are happiest in warm temperatures. They like to be as warm as you are. The colder weather, in the early and late weeks of the baseball season, will make your bats more brittle. This is why Canadians choose to split maple logs in winter! We have even recommended to equipment managers that they install a simple lamp fixture in the bat rack. This way, bats can be kept warmer (when needed) before use and they will last longer.
Our Sam Bats are made from the finest hard maple we can find. Maple is a denser and more durable wood than ash and the better wood makes a better bat. We take precise measurements of the density of the wood we use, and carefully match the best wood for the particular model of bat we are about to make. Extraordinary care is taken in the turning and shaping and finishing of each bat. The result is a sleek, strong, beautifully formed instrument we call Sam Bat. As graceful and appealing as the game itself. Remember to touch all the bases!
Hitting a baseball with a wooden bat involves a learning process that professional hitters go through. There is more to it than long sessions of swinging and tinkering with mechanics, more adjusting and swinging, and so on. It is something ball players develop a feel for. There are only a few solid things anyone needs to know before stepping up to the plate.
When the label is facing up (or the opposite, when the label is at the bottom of the bat, facing the plate) you will automatically make contact with the ball on the bats strongest surface. This is important. When teaching hitting, professional instructors explain grain direction in wood with the help of a stack of letter envelopes. If you strike the flat side of the envelopes against your hand [diagram A] you see how they offer little resistance. The same procedure using the edges of the envelopes [diagram B] produces a remarkably different result. Like the envelopes, the composition of wood gives it an impressive strength against the grain. The Sam Bat label - and the grain of the wood - helps you find the "sweet spot" on your bat. Hitting the baseball squarely on the sweet spot will help you reach the fences.
Diagram A Diagram B
The most proficient major league hitters are "zoned in" and the sweet spot of their bats consistently meets the ball. The sweet spot on a wood bat is only about four inches long, the width of your hand. If you are swinging a metal bat you won't easily sense when you are hitting the ball just right, meaning, on the sweet spot. Before switching to wood bats you might want to test your own ability to consistently hit the sweet spot. Place an eight-inch long strip of white surgical tape lengthwise on the barrel of your metal bat. With a felt pen make a vertical line on the tape the width of two fingers from the end of the barrel, then four inches further along mark another line - between these lines is the sweet spot of your bat. The balls that strike it will mark the tape. When the ends of the tape remain nice and white and the middle section is black with hits you are ready to start hitting with wood. Being zoned in will save you a pile of money because you won't splinter so many wood bats.
Incidentally, maple bats - or practically any wood product that has to stand up to punishing use - are happiest in warm temperatures. They like to be as warm as you are. The colder weather, in the early and late weeks of the baseball season, will make your bats more brittle. This is why Canadians choose to split maple logs in winter! We have even recommended to equipment managers that they install a simple lamp fixture in the bat rack. This way, bats can be kept warmer (when needed) before use and they will last longer.
Our Sam Bats are made from the finest hard maple we can find. Maple is a denser and more durable wood than ash and the better wood makes a better bat. We take precise measurements of the density of the wood we use, and carefully match the best wood for the particular model of bat we are about to make. Extraordinary care is taken in the turning and shaping and finishing of each bat. The result is a sleek, strong, beautifully formed instrument we call Sam Bat. As graceful and appealing as the game itself. Remember to touch all the bases!
