Who Invented the Modern Baseball Bat?
David Pinto over at Baseball Musings gave me a pointer to this Jim Caple article about baseball bats.
Caple ordered replicas of bats originally made for Honus Wagner, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth.
This part caught my eye:
There are two main things you notice when you pick up these bats. One, they’re big. The Ruth and Shoeless Joe bats are 36 inches long and weigh 38-40 ounces, depending on whose scale you trust. Next, with the exception of the Ruth bat, the handles are much thicker than modern bats. Scott Spiezio measured the Shoeless Joe bat against his own and found that Jackson’s handle was almost as thick as his is at the trademark. There are Hickory Farms beef sticks that are thinner. The Cobb and Wagner bats also have almost no knobs.
I was thinking none of the bats other than Ruth’s would have a knob. Multiple times I’ve heard Ruth is credited for inventing the modern bat - with a knob on the end.
Ruth played from 1914-1935. Shoeless Joe played from 1908-1920.
That’s a decent overlap for Jackson using a bat that Ruth supposedly brought to the scene, but some Google image seaching let me find this picture:
”Joe Showing Us How To Lay One Down”, dated 1912, from this page: Pictures of Shoeless Joe Jackson
That website even sells a replica of “Black Betsy”, Shoeless Joe’s bat. Louisville Slugger made three of them for Jackson back in 1915 according to the site, although Ruth’s career had started by then.
However - if there are early picture of Jackson with all his bats having knobs on them - why is Ruth given credit for making the modern bat? Was it also a skinnier handle?
I love reading about Ruth, I’m a fan like many others, just looking for some clarification here.
Update Dec 27 2006: Unfortunately this post was deleted by accident today. Thanks to my own backups and Google cache, the above is the original post. There were two replies, which I’ll copy to here:
Posted by Brian Gill on Jul 27, 2005 at 04:35 PM
Remember that Ruth was a pitcher through 1918. And only really became a full time hitter in 1919.
http://www.baseballreference.com/r/ruthba01.shtml
He became the slugger we think of him as today in 1920 (54 HR). Even if he invented it in 1918, people likely would not have been emulating him until he was a major success.
BTW if you like Ruth stats: try comparing his first 9 years as a pitcher to Pedro Martinez’s.
Posted by David M Singer on Jul 27, 2005 at 05:03 PM
True, and entirely my point - that there must be something else to him being credited for inventing the “modern baseball bat”, which most sources just mention as him ordering a bat with a knob, although he obviously wasn’t the first.
I’ve read that the Babe even said he thought Shoeless Joe’s swing was so good he tried to copy it - well, why not his bat as well?
btw - as a pitcher and part-time fielder Ruth led the majors in HR in 1918 - with 11. Led the league in strikeouts that year too, but we’ll ignore that right now… smile
Hopefully someone can shed some light on this.
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