The Book dictates maximums: the bat may not be longer than 42 inches or more than 2 3/4 inches in diameter. Each bat is to "be a smooth, round stick not more than 2 3/4 inches in diameter at the thickest part and not more than 42 inches in length. The bat shall be one piece of solid wood." [1.10]

Like those of the ball, standards for the bat have remained largely unchanged in this century, but the nineteenth century saw several versions. In 1862 the first restriction was introduced, as the bat was to be not more than 2 1/2 inches in diameter. In 1895, the present maximum of 2 3/4 inches was established. The length was limited in 1868 to 42 inches, as it is today.

Big Bats, Little Bats. No weight requirements for bats have ever been specified, and it’s probably a good thing, since fashions seem to change when it comes to bat weights. Babe Ruth used a fifty-two-ounce bat. "It’s not only heavy but long," Ruth told Baseball magazine. "Most bats weigh under forty [ounces]. My theory is the bigger the bat, the faster the ball will travel. It’s really the weight of the bat that drives the ball, and I like the heavy bat. I have strength enough to swing it, and when I meet the ball, I want to feel that I have something in my hands that will make it travel." It wasn’t until about thirty years later that "bat speed" became the key term in bat-chat.

It’s Not the Bat, It’s the Motion » The smallest bat on record? Wee Willie Keeler, at 5 feet 4 1/2 inches and 140 pounds, used a 30 1/2-inch bat. » They may have laughed at his bat, but it seems unlikely that many people made fun of Keeler’s results: The Wee One batted a not-so-small .432 in 1897 (the third highest batting average in baseball history), and he had eight 200-hit seasons. » Even by today’s standards, Keeler’s was a Little League-sized bat, but in those days, big sticks were the rule. As his contemporary, Stan Hack, recalled, "My thirty-four-ounce bat was the lightest on the champion 1935 Cubs. The other fellows used to ask, ‘How can you hit with that matchstick?’"

Another believer in the heavy bat was Hack Miller. In 1923, he hit a then-impressive twenty home runs using what he claimed was a sixty-five-ounce bat. Though he played in portions of others, that was his only full major league season. Perhaps he was just plain tuckered out after a year of swinging that giant club.

By the 1950s, lighter bats had come into favor. Mickey Mantle used a bat in the range of thirty-two to thirty-four ounces; Willie Mays liked a thirty-three or thirty-four. As a spokesman for Spaulding said then, "Our normal assortment of a dozen bats used to range from thirty-six to forty-two ounces [but] we can’t even give away the big bats anymore." The trend has continued as Mark McGwire, who designed his own bat in 1987 and hasn’t switched since, uses a bat that’s 34 1/2 inches long and weighs thirty-three ounces (that’s 1 1/2 inches shorter than Roger Maris’s and nine ounces lighter than Babe Ruth’s). Its label says "BIG STICK," which McGwire can get away with, even though his bat is close to the average size of thirty-four inches, thirty-two ounces.

If you like to get technical, talk about bats with Al Campanis, he of blacks-can’t-be-managers fame. Here’s what he has to say: "It has been proven that energy or force is equal to mass times velocity squared. In applying this formula to batting, the significant factor is velocity, since it is squared.

"In other words," Campanis continued, "the faster swing you can make with the lighter bat more than compensates for the reduced weight." If Einstein had spent more time at Ebbets Field and less at Princeton University, he might have come up with E = mc² a little sooner.

Bat-Making. Major league bats are made by either the Hillerich and Bradsby Company of Jeffersonville, Indiana (across the river from Louisville, Kentucky, where the company began and from which it took its famous product name, "Louisville Slugger"); the Adirondack Bat Company (owned by Rawlings) in Dolgeville, New York; or Worth (manufacturers of the "Tennessee Thumper"), of Tullahoma, Tennessee.

White ash has long been the preferred wood (Fraxinus americana, if you’re interested). Most of it comes from New York and Pennsylvania, and the most suitable ash trees are sixty-to-seventy-five years old and roughly twelve to fourteen inches in diameter. The best part of the log is the butt, or base, of the trunk. The bats you buy at the sporting goods store are made by automatic lathes, but pro bats are shaped on hand lathes.

Bat Superstitions » Ballplayers are known as a superstitious lot, and that’s particularly true when it comes to bats. Many players have had favorites over the years, not least of all Babe Ruth, one of whose cracked Louisville Sluggers resides in the Hillerich and Bradsby Museum. It has twenty-one notches cut into the wood around its trademark, one for each of the twenty-one homers he hit with it in 1927–that is, twenty-one of the sixty he hit that year. » Orlando Cepeda had a theory that every bat had one hit in it, so every hit meant a new bat. Wade Boggs feels somewhat the same way. He discards a bat when he feels he has exhausted its supply of hits. » Then there’s the pragmatic Ted Williams. He wasn’t notably superstitious, but he had an uncanny sense of weight and balance. He could detect even tiny variations in the weight or length of a bat. He once returned a shipment of bats for being five-thousandths of an inch off.

Colored Bats. The dark bats you see have a so-called "Hickory Finish"; the tan ones have a light brown stain, named the "Hornsby Finish," after Rogers, whose lifetime .358 batting average suggests he knew a thing or two about bats. The two-tone bats date from a visit that Harry "The Hat" Walker made to the Hillerich and Bradsby plant. The only bat they had in stock that day that fit his needs was being used to stir stain. He took it anyway and got four hits that evening. The two-tone bat became his trademark, and to this day, it is known as having a "Walker Finish." More recently, there was the (George) "Foster Finish," for the black beauties he used. Tony Gwynn’s favorite design has a black barrel with a white handle, while Andy Van Slyke chose a rose-colored barrel with a natural handle. These natural shades are allowed, but Rule 1. 10d prohibits "colored" bats.

Metal Bats. Professional baseball has for years been the last bastion of the wooden bat: Metals bats are not allowed in the majors but aluminum accounts for some ninety percent of bat sales. Since 1974 metal bats have been legal in college play and it has long ceased to be news when a team signs up a prospect who has never used a wooden bat. Not so many years ago, Sports Illustrated decreed the wooden bat on the verge of obsolescence.

The tide may be turning, however, as the NCAA passed new regulations in 1998. Bat makers were required to make their bats heavier and with a smaller barrel, to slow bat speed and reduce the velocity of the ball flying off the bat. Injuries–especially to pitchers–is the primary explanation, but cost is a factor, too. (Some aluminum bats cost $300 or more.)

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