A
Real Corker
Allegations
of bat tampering flew throughout the 1987 baseball season. Yet,
not since 1974--when the bat of the New York Yankees' Graig Nettles
broke and several compressed rubber balls spill out--had a hitter
been ejected for using a doctored bat. In response to the latest
flurry of bat-related rhubarbs, Major League Baseball Commissioner
Peter Ueberroth granted managers permission to confiscate one
bat from an opponent if they suspected tampering.
In August,
a representative from Ueberroth's office asked NIST experts on
non-destructive evaluation to do a quick study of ways to detect
illegal cork or rubber cores bored into the heads of bats. A handful
of scientists and engineers from NIST's Gaithersburg, Md., headquarters,
and Boulder, Colo., facility contributed to the effort.
With four
bats (two normal bats and two with cork cores about two pencil
widths in diameter) supplied by Major League Baseball, the NIST
team assessed a variety of approaches-ultrasound
and several types of x-ray devices, including a CAT
scanner. Two of the bats--one "loaded" and the other
not--were even taken to Boulder Memorial Hospital for diagnostic
x-rays, which were viewed from several carefully determined
perspectives. The cost of the service was $30.
Conclusion
Medical x-rays were probably the best imaging tools for non-destructive
tests of baseball bats. They were deemed the quickest and most
practical option, since most ball parks were equipped with x-ray
machines for diagnosing player injuries. In contrast, measurements
made with ultrasound were less definitive, and the data took longer
to collect and interpret.
Postscript
On September 1, 1987, the day after NIST researcher Ray Schramm
took two bats in for x-rays at Boulder Memorial, Houston Astros
outfielder Billy Hatcher was ejected from a game against the Chicago
Cubs for using a corked bat. No x-rays were needed in this case.
Hatcher hit a broken-bat single, and one of the shards ended up
in the hands of Cubs third baseman Keith Moreland, who held up
the remnant for all to see. Said umpire John McSherry: "The
bat was hollowed out at the barrel and had three or four inches
cork inside it."
Hatcher, the
Astros leading hitter, said he was using a borrowed bat because
all his bats were broken. He maintained that he did not know it
was corked. He was suspended for 10 days, just as his team was
challenging for a divisional title.
Reflection:
Why cork the bat?
"At the time we had several discussions of the physics of
corking bats. Was it a weight change that allowed a faster swing
due to change in moment of inertia? Was it a change in coefficient
of restitution that imparted more energy to the ball? I don't
believe we ever came to a consensus. My opinion (and only that)
is that any effect was strictly psychological."
--Ray Schramm, retired NIST researcher (deceased)
Links
Baseball
bat images from the NIST study
NIST's
Material Reliability Division (site of much of NIST's research
on methods of non-destructive evaluation)
