[spaceman]

No wonder Sosa can hit home runs! "ummm, I only use it for batting practice, and I grabbed the wrong one." Plus he admitted to using it in the all-star HR derby! Wonder how many others do this?

 

[MusicLover]

EDIT: dumb post, not worth posting.

 

[PeterG]

On corked bats... link

 

[Sovkiller]

How can they avoid this hassle, very simple, do not let them use their own bats, just keep in the field an stock of good bats lets say 50 bats, and that's it, at the end there is not such an expensive thing....

 

[bootman]

In his defense he did say that he had only one and that he picked this one up by mistake.
The league examined 76 of his bats and they were all legal bats.
Still it does look very bad.

 

[dd3mon]

A professional baseball player (a player known for his hitting, having 77 personal bats) can tell the difference between a corked, and a non-corked bat by the feel of it. There is no question that he knew what bat he had, this is his profession.

A fair comparison for a head-fier would be that he picked up a pair of v600s by accident, and made no effort to rectify the situation even after the music started playing.

Another interesting question is why would he have a corked bat, even for practice? Doesn't practice normally involve making things more difficult than an actual game? (eg: weights on bats)

-dd3mon

 

[MusicLover]

It's too bad he got in trouble. I seriously doubt he would lie about it being an accident.

 

[elrod-tom]

Quote:

Originally posted by spaceman No wonder Sosa can hit home runs! "ummm, I only use it for batting practice, and I grabbed the wrong one." Plus he admitted to using it in the all-star HR derby! Wonder how many others do this?

Do you think that he'll use the same excuse for steroids? You know, that he only uses them during batting practice?

 

[radrd]

Quote:

It's too bad he got in trouble. I seriously doubt he would lie about it being an accident.

I would lie, especially if I knew that my reputation was on the line like his is. Seriously, why don't you think he lied?

 

[spaceman]

Quote:

A professional baseball player (a player known for his hitting, having 77 personal bats) can tell the difference between a corked, and a non-corked bat by the feel of it. There is no question that he knew what bat he had, this is his profession.

Excellent point! Plus, I do not think he would so stupid as to cork every one of his bats...just 1 or 2. However, he must have known that there was a good chance of that bat breaking, especially during a game. I thought the days of corked bats were gone, makes you wonder how many more are being used

 

[Jacobh]

Considering he had 76 other bats that were completely legal, I'm inclined to believe he didn't lie. However, I do think he didn't tell the whole truth. Coming of an injury and not hitting poorly, he probably thought "I'll use the corked one for a couple of games, get a hit or two, get back in a groove and then switch back to my normal bat."

 

[MacDEF]

Quote:

Originally posted by dd3mon A professional baseball player (a player known for his hitting, having 77 personal bats) can tell the difference between a corked, and a non-corked bat by the feel of it. There is no question that he knew what bat he had, this is his profession.

Clearly you've never swung a corked bat, or even bats of different weights.

The difference in weight between a corked and a standard bat is usually around 1 ounce. Here's a test: spend years bulking up your body until you can bench press around 300-350 pounds. Then tell me that with all that strength, you can pick up a random bat, put a 5-pound weight on it, swing it for a few minutes to warm up, remove the weight, and then tell me whether it weighs 34 ounces or 33 ounces.

I'll bet you my entire headphone system that you couldn't

Quote:

Another interesting question is why would he have a corked bat, even for practice? Doesn't practice normally involve making things more difficult than an actual game? (eg: weights on bats)

The don't put weights on bats for practice. Baseball players put weights on the bat when they're on deck (next up to bat), but that's done to warm up and loosen up.

Batting practice for many teams is a chance for kids to watch players hit the ball out of the park. Sammy Sosa is nowhere near the first player to use a corked bat during batting practice in order to hit a bunch of balls over the fence for the fans. When I was a kid Dave Kingman supposedly did the same thing, and I've heard it's pretty common nowadays.


The irony is that the physics of bats pretty clearly shows that corked bats don't really make the ball go any farther, since the increased bat speed that a player can get due to a lighter bat is pretty much offset by the reduction of momentum due to the lower mass. Sadly, people are going to try to use this to discredit Sosa even if he NEVER used a corked bat in a game.

People are jealous. People are spiteful. Even it he's innocent and this was completely an accident, some people will always hold this against him.

P.S. Why do I believe him?

1) None of his other bats were corked. (And he's broken MANY bats over the years, and none of those were corked, either -- and corked bats break much more easily.)

2) The bat he used was clearly marked with a big "C" on the end, for "cork" LOL

3) He didn't even try to pick up the bat after it broke, which people using corked bats always rush to do. If he knew he was using a corked bat, he wouldn't have left the pieces sitting on the field and walked back to the dugout as if nothing had happened. If you've watched a lot of baseball, you'll know what I mean -- people batting with corked bats scramble to pick up all the pieces before anyone can see them!

 

[Lando]

Kids, don't use steroids, or you'll end up with a corked bat.

 

[gswpete]

From a player's view point:

Sosa said he used the corked bat only during batting practice and home run derbies, but both Aurilia and Snow said players are careful with their bats and rarely would they mistake a BP model for their gamers.

"There have been suspicions about players using corked bats," said Snow, who said he played around with one while at Candlestick in batting practice in the late 1990s and added it definitely gave the ball more oomph.

"It probably added five to 15 feet," said Snow. "There are guys out there now using corked bats. If they think if gives them an edge, it'll work, because it does give them an edge -- it makes them feel better at the plate."

Still, added Snow, "Is the risk worth the reward?"




http://giants.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/sf/...=.jsp&c_id=sfn

 

[williamgoody]

Quote:

The difference in weight between a corked and a standard bat is usually around 1 ounce.

Actually it's a little more. like four or five ounces. I've swung both and there definitely is a difference.



Quote:

The irony is that the physics of bats pretty clearly shows that corked bats don't really make the ball go any farther, since the increased bat speed that a player can get due to a lighter bat is pretty much offset by the reduction of momentum due to the lower mass. Sadly, people are going to try to use this to discredit Sosa even if he NEVER used a corked bat in a game.

Actually it's the bat speed which creates the power, not the mass. So the reduction in mass doesn't necessarily hurt your power in this case. And there are plenty of studies which show how much of a difference it does make using a corked bat, but there are also scientists who claim there is no curve ball.

Sammy was wrong, and he got caught. There will be doubt now, as there should be, of his on the field accomplishments, because he DID get caught using one during a game. I don't believe his story, and I don't believe that he didn't knowingly grab the bat on purpose. Being who he is you would think he would know better.