1 3516 Reedster Reedster^1948 Correction on podcast [Reply to #3516] 5/26/06, 9:05am Regarding the corked bat discussion in softball, during our False Rumors segment, I got a response from Boogaman that I thought was interesting... and, as I made a mistake, deserving of the correction. Read on... It is amazing what people will do to win a game in a rec league. &box-I just listened to the podcast. Thanks for the shoutout. You guys were mentioning corked aluminum bats and that is inaccurate. What they do is remove the endcaps on the aluminum bats and machine the inner walls making the aluminum thinner which increases the trampoline, rebound effect. The bats are manufactored to strict tolerances to be legal for the association (ASA,ISA, USSSA, NSA) standards. The cheating happens when the bats are post-manufacture machined to exceed the tolerances mandated by the regulating associations. Shaving the inside of the bat typically alters the weight of the bat. I have also heard that the weighting in the bat may be altered to compensate or for preference giving the bat an endload or vice versa. The other popular mode of altering bats is to paint an illegal bat to appear as a legal bat. This has been done with some Miken brand bats as the original Miken was extremely hot. After numerous injuries the regulating associations determined that those bats were too hoot for the field dimensions and the risk of injury to participants was too great to allow these bats to be used under association play. An underground industry developed to paint these bats and add decals to make them look identical to the legal bats that replaced them. Several years back titanium bats were manufactured. These bats sold for about $500-$600. They were too hot and were immediately banned. It has been popular to paint these bats to look like legal bats. The problem with the titanium is it has a distinct sound. This problem was solved by adding cotton inside the bat to dampen the sound. This could alter the weight of the bat by several ounces. Corking does not work with aluminum. I had a bat that we filled with racket balls a while back and tried it out in practice. The balls added way to much weight to the bats to be of any advantage. If anything they hampered performance of the bat too but the bat's weighting was significantly impaired. I would say that any myth of adding tennis balls to the inside of a bat is untrue. If you go into a bat shop or a sporting goods store and try out the feel of a bat, ask to try out a bat sleeve. These sleeves are very light but by sliding them over the bat the centrifugal force on the bat makes it feel like a heavy weight has been added to the bat. Thought I'd throw out some food for thought. As I said earlier, I have had word that some of this has spread beyond recreational ball. -box& [Reedster from Sylmar/CA] Replies: