Many of the sports popular around the world are known for their distinctive equipment and play balls, such as the sticks and face masks of hockey, the hoops and orange ball of basketball, and the net and racquets of tennis. Baseball, meanwhile, was pioneered in the United States and Canada and has become a worldwide sensation, popular in its homelands and Japan, too. This sport is well known for its wooden or metal bats, small white ball, catcher’s mitts, and more. Variants exist such as softball and fastpitch, which prove plenty popular. Anyone getting into baseball or its variants will want to buy the right gear, and baseball bats tend to be either ash wood models, or made of hollow metal with some stuffing inside.
Players may note that doctored fastpitch softball bats for sale are also available, and these doctored fastpitch softball bats for sale tend to be either shaved bats or rolled bats. What does that mean, though? Someone looking for doctored fastpitch softball bats for sale should also be aware that modified bats are not tournament legal. They’re best used for practice sessions and casual, non-sanctioned games.
What a Bat Shaving Service Can Offer
Someone looking for doctored fastpitch softball bats for sale will find shaved bats, or they may approach bat shaving services to get the job done on their metal bat. As mentioned above, metal baseball bats are not solid like wooden ones are, but are hollow and have padding inside of them for support and flexibility. Shaving a bat means taking it to a firm that offers a lathe table, a machine that will use a grinding surface to modify a piece of hardware. When a baseball bat is shaved, the user will remove its cap to expose the hollow interior, and the bat is secured to the lathe table. A grinder surface will go inside that bat and shave away a few ounces of material, taking care so not too much is removed. When this is done, the bat is taken off the table and its cap is put back on.
Doing this makes a metal bat even more flexible and allows it to hit baseballs further than non-modified bats. Someone who gets their bat shaved should make sure to not shave away padding inside the handle, or it will become too fragile for gameplay. Also, temperatures lower than 65 degrees Fahrenheit are bad for them, players should note. Finally, these modified bats are not legal for official gameplay, so perhaps they are best used for casual games.
Rolling a Baseball Bat
Bat modification services are also available for wooden baseball bats, in this case, bat rolling. These bats are solid and thus can’t be shaved, but they are made from natural wood and thus, natural fibers. Here again, the bat’s owner may approach modification services to enhance the bat’s performance. This time, the bat is passed through a series of rollers a few times, and this will break and stretch out its fibers. Care should be taken so that the bat is not excessively rolled.
Wooden baseball bats are naturally broken in as they are used, and as they strike balls, their fibers break and stretch. After a point, these bats are fully broken in and can strike a ball further than when they were first used. This is to be desired, but some players may artificially speed up this process with bat rolling. And as with shaved bats, this sort of modification is not allowed for sanctioned games, and what is more, players or staff on site can probably recognized a rolled bat on sight. For this reason, it is best to use rolled bats only for casual games or for practice.
After all, a player may have a prized, fully broken in wooden bat that they use in games, but don’t want to risk breaking in practice games. So, that player may use a replica: a rolled baseball bat. That bat will mimic the authentic bat’s performance, but it is expendable in case something should go wrong during a practice game. Rolling that bat speeds up the process of making it ready for use.
