What makes softball bats illegal

Section 3 ART. No artificial or intentional means shall be used to control the temperature of the bat. No foreign substance may be inserted into the bat. Bats that are broken, cracked or dented or that deface the ball, i.

A bat that continually discolors the ball may be removed from the game with no penalty at the discretion of the umpire. Section 1 ART. In addition, each coach shall verify that his participants are using only legal equipment, including bats and balls that are unaltered from the manufacturer's original design and production and that meet the provisions of and , and helmets that meet the provisions of and are free of cracks and damage.

Section 4 ART. If the infraction is discovered before the next pitch following the turn at bat of the player who used an illegal bat, the defense may take the penalty or the result of the play;. On the second violation for entering the box with an illegal bat,the penalty for an illegal bat is applied and the head coach shall be ejected.

The photograph at right shows a lathe used by a bat doctor ready to shave the inside of a composite bat. Many composite bats are multi-wall bats, meaning that the bat barrel is comprised of two or three layers of composite materials.

Shaving the inner layer greatly weakens it to the point that it may break and fall apart, causing the bat to sound like one of those rain sticks. While the performance of such a bat may go way up for a while, the durability is greatly compromised.

But, it cannot be disputed that shaving a bat to make the barrel wall thinner does indeed improve performance. The two graphs below were provide to me by a manufacturer and show the measured batted-ball speeds for an aluminum bat left graph and composite bat right graph for which the walls were successively shaved. Removing 0. If the original bat had the ASA certification stamp indicating batted-ball speed below mph , the modified bat now well exceeds the ASA performance limit and is now illegal.

The change in the composite bat is even more dramatic. Starting with a production model bat and shaving off 4 plies on the inner diameter increases the batted-ball speed by 6. This bat, which originally came in just under the mph limit now drastically exceeds the limit, with a measured batted-ball speed of mph. The bar chart at right shows the measured change in performance for several aluminum and composite slow-pitch softball bats both before and after sending them to a bat doctor for shaving.

The batted-ball speed for very single bat improved by at least 2-mph, with some bats improving by almost 8-mph. The ASA performance limit is 98 mph, and every single one of these doctored bats exceeds this upper limit after being shaved. In other words, every one of these altered bats is now illegal.

Players resulted to making bats hollow or even adding foreign substances inside the bats to increase overall hit power. In , after Easton introduced their aluminum bat release, other manufacturers decided to jump in and develop aluminum bats as well. Aluminum bats were preferred mostly due to their ability to make good hits. Then came the introduction of titanium to softball bats. As a relatively powerful element, titanium can produce a tough but light substance when alloyed with aluminum or iron.

Manufacturers did not waste time as saw the release of the first titanium bat. Several producers followed suit and titanium bats flooded the softball accessory market. Titanium was a massive hit as it allowed for faster hits of up to miles an hour. The increased exit velocity made titanium bats highly risky, especially since they increased the risk of injury. Softballs moved too fast to be considered safe enough for amateur or even league play. Due to the risk of injury and unfair advantage, most leagues proceeded to ban the use of titanium bats.

However, some tournaments allowed the use of the high-risk titanium bats, which made manufacturers continue in their research to develop the bats. Companies such as Louisville Slugger altered the initial designs to make them less dangerous. However, the modifications only made the bats riskier as some bats could even achieve injury-causing velocities of up to mph. As such, the bodies opted to set regulations based on specific lab-conducted procedures. This led to the authorization of an exclusive set of bats that meet standard regulation.

A doctored or juiced bat is one that is physically altered to have enhanced features. When juicing bats, inertial and elastic properties are usually modified from their initial values during manufacture.