A number of the most popular sports in the world are easy to identify through the equipment and sports balls used to play them, such as soccer balls or golf clubs or tennis racquets. Most sports also need a specialized field or arena, too, such as golf courses and baseball diamonds. Baseball and softball are highly popular in North America and Japan, and professional and amateur athletes alike are going to need the best baseball and softball bats for a good game. Local sports outlets sell popular brands of baseball and softball bats, as do online catalogs and secondary sellers. but what about doctored bats, such as rolled and shaved bats? Rolled bats mimic the performance of fully broken-in wooden bats, and shaved bats are modified from the inside. Players can get their hands on these rolled and shaved bats for practice games or for casual games alike, and buy them pre-doctored if they like.
Rolled Wooden Bats
Ever since the 1800s, ash wood has been the traditional material for making baseball and softball bats, and this is still true today. A fresh wooden bat will get broken in as it is used, and the pressure of striking baseballs or softballs will bend and break the bat’s natural wooden fibers. The result is (after enough use) a wooden bat that is more flexible and can strike balls further than normal, and such broken-in bats may be highly prized among players. But what if a player wants to speed up that process? A player can find rolled bats for sale online, but local services may help create rolled and shaved bats on demand, too.
To make a rolled bat, a wooden baseball bat is passed through a series of pressurized rollers at the rolling service, and this process will bend and break the bat’s wooden fibers as desired. Care should be taken during this process, or else the bat will end up damaged and unusable. But if done correctly, this results in a bat that performs like a broken-in bat, minus the time needed to break it in, which is convenient. These rolled bats can be used as stand-ins for a player’s prized wooden bats during a practice session, so the player gets the same performance, minus the risk of damaging their prized bats. These rolled bats can also be used during casual games for enhanced performance, but take note that rolled bats are not allowed at sanctioned baseball games. League experts can probably identify these rolled bats on sight, anyway.
Shaving a Metal Bat
Many sports brands offer metal baseball and softball bats, which are in fact hollow on the inside and feature inner padding to protect that bat during use and prevent it from breaking. Metal bats are popular, but they do not have natural wooden fibers to bend during use, so they do not get broken in. Even if they can’t get rolled like wooden bats, though, metal bats can be doctored, via the shaving process. A player can find them when they look up “rolled and shaved bats for sale” online, or visit local shaving and rolling services for help.
Instead of being rolled, a metal bat will have its end cap removed, and that bat is placed on a lathe table and fed to a rotating grinder surface. That grinder proceeds to shave off a few ounces of material from the bat’s insides, and then the bat is removed from the table and its end cap is removed. As a result, the metal bat is more flexible and thus can strike baseballs and softballs further during gameplay. But care should be taken; if too much material is shaved off, then the bat becomes fragile and may shatter during use, and for the same reason, no padding should be removed from the bat’s handle, either.
Shaved metal bats are a fine choice for casual games where league rules are not enforced, since like rolled wooden bats, they are not allowed at official games. They are also useful for practice, but take note that shaved bats do not perform well in temperatures under 65 degrees Fahrenheit.
