Got Wood? The Case for Wood Bat Standard in Baseball

There truly is nothing sweeter than the sound of a baseball hitting a bat. The sure sound of the solid wood bat gets a gut reaction out of the crowd no matter in which ballpark the game is being played. But those with a discerning ear will notice that sound is not nearly as frequent in June as it is in July and August. Managers, players, and broadcasters all talk about the adjustment needed by hitters when they arrive in the league from aluminum bats to wood. There is a simple way to fix this transition period often seen in the New England College Baseball League (NECBL): Make wood bats the standard in baseball again.

The use of wood bats in the NCAA has been gone since 1975 when the organization made the official transition to aluminum bats. The majority opinion was that the change would reduce costs for the schools and players. Athletic directors were able to show thousands of dollars being allocated elsewhere if schools did not have to spend the money replacing broken bats every week of the season. But it was easy to see how aluminum changed the game by inflating offensive numbers. Lighter bats allow for both bat speeds to increase and for a change in the physics of hitting a baseball, giving players higher probabilities of deeper fly balls and home runs. While the NCAA still allows the use of wood bats, the majority of players take hold of aluminum or composite bats during the spring.

Aluminum bats today are not the ones that many older baseball players used to swing on ball fields across America.  The advances in technology in the world of aluminum and composite bats have brought drastic changes to college baseball, so much so that in 2011, the NCAA adopted the BBCOR standard with all non-wood bats, effectively requiring them to produce batted ball speeds no greater than their wood counter parts. The BBCOR standard was instituted after not only a major leap in offense in the early 2000s, but an increased concern for infielders, especially pitchers and third basemen, with a risk of injury due to batted ball speeds exceeding 100 MPH.

Youth players want nothing more on the diamond than emulate their favorite players from the pros. This mimicry doesn’t stop with copying a big leaguers routine in the box; they want to swing the wood too. In a pregame interview at Cardines Field with Newport Gulls hitting Coach Al Leyva, the coach explained that he is seeing a lot of younger players taking batting practice with wood bats then playing with the aluminum during games. Leyva added that he has seen a decrease in players having to transition from aluminum to wood over the last ten years and that the popularity of wood bats in youth leagues are part of that reason.

In an ideal world, there would be a complete change in all levels of baseball, starting when youth players step onto a regulation diamond. It doesn’t matter if it is the Babe Ruth League, Senior League or other youth baseball programs: once play begins on the 90 foot diamond, they should be swinging lumber. If the two major youth baseball organizations do not want to make the switch (and wooden bats are not the biggest issue plaguing Little League Baseball, but that’s another story), then at the very least, the National Federation of State High School Association (NFHS) should switch to a wood bat standard. The standard would be simple: at all levels nationwide, when a high school athlete starts playing competitively for their school, all bats are wood.

Working in the Massachusetts Baseball Umpires Association (MBUA), I have seen many divisions in the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) hold a rule of wood bat only. It has been my experience that leagues that are exclusive to wood bats are the more competitive and mechanically sound leagues in the game of baseball. I am not saying that errors, blowouts, and bad teams do not exist in these leagues; Instead, what I am saying is that there is a higher level of intensity, the offensive gap is much smaller, and the level of play on the field is higher because it simply has to be. When a player swings wood, they are forced to fix bad habits, or they find themselves riding the bench. The difference at the plate is so great that often times, the statistically worst player on a wood bat team is a good to superior player when given an aluminum bat.

Finally it is the goal of every collegiate baseball player to make it to “The Show”. A tell-tale sign of when a scout is at a college game is when players who have been using aluminum bats their entire season all of a sudden come to the dish with a wood bat. Why? Because wood is the standard in Major League Baseball and the scouts want to see if a player has a natural swing with a wooden bat or if those roaring doubles are aluminum enhanced.

The idea of seeing baseball across America played as it once was is a dream, I know. But if in all the leagues, (youth, high school, and college), the aspiration is to play in a mirrored fashion as the pros, then what is the harm? I am of the opinion that there would be a drastic improvement in the development of players and thus the overall improvement of the game.. Maybe it’s just me, and maybe I still have the dream like that of a corn farmer in Iowa but baseball is a simple game, with a white and red stitched ball and a wood bat. It’s simplicity over science and it’s what makes baseball beautiful.