Many sports today are recognizable due to the particular equipment used in them, such as tennis racquets, hockey sticks, and golf clubs. This certainly includes baseball and softball, which prove massively popular in the United States and Japan. Baseball and softball call for wooden or metal bats, as well as leather catcher’s mitts. Amateur and pro players alike can buy new bats any time, and many sports outlets feature various brands of wooden and metal bats. A new bat is ready for use right away, but some players opt to modify, or doctor, those bats for enhanced performance. These bats may be rolled or shaved to modify their performance, and rolled bats can give a play an edge in casual games. The same is true for shaved bats. Why might a player look for rolled Dudley bats (for example) online, or get rolled Dudley bats from a local bat rolling service? And how does this even work?
Bat Rolling For You
Rolled baseball bats are wooden bats that have been distressed in pressurized rollers. A wooden bat (often made of ash wood) needs to be broken in first, and a fresh bat’s natural wooden fibers will be bent and broken a that bat is used in gameplay. The blunt trauma of striking balls will break in a wooden bat normally, and after a few hundred strikes, the bat will be more flexible, and optimized for gameplay performance. But a player can simulate this process and speed it up when they take their bat to a rolling service, or look for rolled Dudley bats online or other brand-name wooden softball bats. If an interested player does not buy rolled Dudley bats online, they can take a fresh wooden bat to local bat rolling and shaving services for work.
The employees there will pass that wooden bat through a series of pressurized rollers, which will bend and break the bat’s fibers to simulate hours of gameplay. Care should be taken so that the bat is not rolled to hard and ends up damaged. If this process is done correctly, the bat will be ready for use and mimic the performance of a naturally broken in bat, but in much less time. These bats can be used in casual games, where they can strike a ball further than a fresh wooden bat. Rolled bats are also a fine option for practice sessions, where they can act as stand-ins for a player’s prized wooden bats. This way, the player can avoid risking damage to their “real” wooden bats during a practice session. But take note that these doctored rolled bats are not allowed at sanctioned and official games, and experts on the field might recognize rolled bats on sight.
Shaved Bats Done Right
Meanwhile, some softball and baseball bats are made of metal rather than wood, and they have a hollow interior with padding to reinforce their bodies during gameplay and prevent damage. These metal bats can be modified, but they won’t be rolled, since they don’t have wooden fibers. Instead, they will be shaved. A player can buy shaved bats online, or take a metal bat of theirs to a local shaving service.
A metal bat’s end cap will be removed to expose the hollow interior, and that bat is then placed on a lathe table. The metal bat is slowly fed to a rotating grinder surface, which will shave away a few ounces of the bat’s inner padding. Once that is done, the bat is removed and its end cap is put back in place. This should be done carefully, since shaving away too much material will make the bat fragile, and it may shatter when it strikes a ball. No material should be shaved away from the handle either, for similar reasons.
Shaved metal bats don’t perform well in cold weather under 65 degrees Fahrenheit, and they are not allowed at official games, either. But they are fine for practice games, and they are a fine choice for casual games, too, where league rules are not enforced. Shaved bats are more flexible than regular metal models, and thus they can strike a ball further.
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