People often ask why it is so important that youth baseball players use wood bats during practice. My first answer is because it is fun,
and I have not met many little boys that do not want to play the game more like the MLB guys. The second
and more practical reason is because Wood Bats Correctly Teach
Players The Strike Zone. An outside pitch hit with an aluminum bat often results in a base hit beyond an infielder even though it was a swing on a bad pitch. Inside pitches thrown in on the batter's hands often become flare-singles
over the 2nd baseman's head. Similar
swings with a wood bat result in weak infield fly balls, grounders, and broken bats. Players learn the strike
zone and which pitches they should lay-off of to get a successful
base hit.
In the old days (before 1972) just about every bat you could buy was wood and you sure didn't want to break the only bat you owned, so you
learned to lay off bad pitches. And,
we all wanted to avoid getting the bee stings in our hands from swinging
at bad pitches on cold spring days! Sometimes those "bees" seemed to vibrate right up the elbow and you felt them in your teeth.
Players learn
the strike zone and the value of pitch selection with a wood bat. When the ball is hit with poor hitting mechanics, the quality of the hit will tell you right away if you are dragging the bat through the hitting zone with a long
lazy swing. The smaller sweet spot on a wood bat requires you to start the hands early, select good pitches to hit and accelerate right through the ball with a flat, level swing to be successful. It just won't let the
bad swings turn into cheap hits. The
wood bat provides positive reinforcement and you know right away that the ball was hit on the "fat part of the bat" by
the way it sounds and flies into the outfield. This provides you with a valuable tool for learning to become a better hitter.
