ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Torpedo baseball bats hit it big when the New York Yankees set a new team record with nine home runs in a game early this season. People noticed the oddly shaped bats that seem to give players more pop at the plate. Alana Schreiber with member station WWNO in New Orleans visited one of the companies making bats that are all the rage.
ALANA SCHREIBER, BYLINE: I'm in heaven. This is a baseball lover's dream.
I'm standing in a conference room at Marucci Sports in Baton Rouge. Bats line the walls all the way up to the ceiling. They're one of the top companies making these new torpedo bats. I'm with Kurt Ainsworth, cofounder and CEO. Even he was amazed at how much people were talking about these bats.
KURT AINSWORTH: It was not your normal just ESPN or MLB Network talking about baseball. It was people with Fox News and CNN talking about baseball. So it became everybody that's not even baseball fans know about torpedo.
SCHREIBER: Anyone who looks at a torpedo bat can tell. What makes them unique is their shape.
AINSWORTH: I mean, it looks like a bowling pin. I mean, they call it a torpedo 'cause it sounds cooler, but it really does look like a bowling pin.
SCHREIBER: Traditional bats get bigger the higher up you go. But torpedo bats bulge out about three quarters of the way up and thin out at the top. In other words, there's a bigger sweet spot.
AINSWORTH: It's basically taking the girth and the size of the end of the bat and moving it into the hitting space, so it gives the player a better chance for success.
SCHREIBER: So let's say a major leaguer wants a torpedo bat. First, he comes to Baton Rouge. Here, he'll meet with Micah Gibbs at Marucci's baseball performance lab. He's worked with some of the MLB's biggest stars.
MICAH GIBBS: Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Arenado, Alex Bregman, Francisco Lindor.
SCHREIBER: Gibbs says a lot goes into finding the perfect bat for a player.
GIBBS: We have a fitting matrix. We have a bunch of different bats, different weights, weight distributions. We put them through an entire physical assessment before they even start swinging.
SCHREIBER: But once they do start swinging, Gibbs takes a video, and a computer analyzes the player as they hit. Wherever they make the most contact, that's where the bat will be thicker.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY SANDING)
SAGER ALLEN: So the bats come in as a billet of wood, and we will cut it into the shape of the bat, whatever that player specified for their bat.
SCHREIBER: That's Sager Allen, a wood operator. He's showing me the factory side of the business, where they cut and sand every bat.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY SANDING)
ALLEN: We have, I want to say, over 70,000 different models we can cut and make. So there's definitely an art form to it.
SCHREIBER: After the bats are cut, sanded and weighed, they head over to the painting department, where they're eventually inscribed with the player's often illegible signature. Then they're shipped to the athletes to test out. But I wanted to test out these bats, too.
(SOUNDBITE OF SQUEAKING)
SCHREIBER: We head to Marucci's onsite batting cages, the same ones where major leaguers are getting fitted. But I'm not worried. I've played two seasons in an adult softball league.
(SOUNDBITE OF BATS CLATTERING)
SCHREIBER: I've brought along Marty Sullivan. He's an LSU sports reporter and, today, my pitcher. He starts throwing, and I start swinging.
(SOUNDBITE OF BAT STRIKING BALL)
SCHREIBER: It's always more of an opposite field kind of hitter.
MARTY SULLIVAN: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF BAT STRIKING BALL)
SCHREIBER: And you can feel it. The sweet spot is bigger...
(SOUNDBITE OF BAT STRIKING BALL)
SCHREIBER: ...So big, in fact, that earlier in the season, some wondered if the bats might get banned. But Tyler Kepner, senior baseball writer for The Athletic, isn't too worried.
TYLER KEPNER: I think it's just an innovation for the hitters, honestly, and we've seen a lot of advancements the last few years in pitching technology. And so I think this is just, you know, one time when the hitters are fighting back a little bit.
SCHREIBER: In other words, baseball is constantly evolving. And these torpedo bats are just the latest innovation in pushing the limits of the game.
(SOUNDBITE OF BAT STRIKING BALL)
SCHREIBER: For NPR News, I'm Alana Schreiber in Baton Rouge.
(SOUNDBITE OF ALBERT VON TILZER AND JACK NORWOOD SONG, "TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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