Wooden Bats
In my family, we make practically everything. A lot of it goes back to necessity. Back in the day, we were a pretty poor farm family. We made our living off of meager soil, and had very little land to support a pretty big group of people. As a result, we made a little bit of extra money where we could. We worked as tinkers in the off season. Although this did not provide us with a very high standard of living, it did give us a self-reliance that has come in handy generation after generation.
That is why my dad was sort of upset when I asked for a metal baseball bat. At the time, I did not have much regard for wooden bats. For me, a baseball bat was sort of a club you used to play baseball. The harder and more fearsome it was, the more damage it could do in the game. I did not know much about what I was talking about, and I hadn’t studied the matter. My dad quickly enlightened me. He showed me the value of the wooden bat.
We actually started making wooden bats together that very summer. I didn’t know at the time, but making wooden bats was a tradition in my family that went back at least a couple generations. If you have some based basic woodworking skills, making a baseball bat is not all that difficult. Coming up with the perfect, well-balanced wooden bat, however, takes a lot of work.
In our case, it took about three times before we really got it right. My dad was out of practice making wooden bats, and he really wasn’t familiar with what my needs were anyway. Different wooden bats will work for different players. Some people need something heavier or thicker, while other people’s do better with a thinner bat. In the league I played for, people don’t really pay a lot of attention to rules governing the dimensions of baseball bats, so you are free to experiment with different styles. This allowed us to come up with the perfect design for my game.
Making one myself gave me a newfound appreciation for wooden bats. Say what you will about the strength and power of metal baseball bats, but in my opinion the wooden baseball bat is a superior instrument. It is well balanced, solid, and has the appropriate springiness to give the ball that extra lift. As a matter of fact, ever since we made the perfect bat, my game has improved tremendously.