Photos: Behind the Scenes at Louisville Slugger

Tell Us: Do you think maple bats should be banned from baseball?

Raw interview with Chuck Schupp, manager of Professional Bat Sales for Louisville Slugger

Behind the Scenes: Making of a Louisville Slugger

(WHAS11) - Major league baseball is examining the safety of maple bats which could have major implications for Louisville Slugger, the largest bat manufacturer in the country.

Most of the bats they make for Major League Baseball are maple.

MLB and the players union are scheduled to discuss the issue on Tuesday, June 24.

Baseball bats made from ash trees were the rule at Louisville Slugger for more than a century.  But now about 60% of pro baseball bats are maple.

Though official statistics are not recorded on broken bats, there appears to be an alarming increase in broken bats, increasing dangers to players and fans and the switch to maple bats has made a big difference when bats break.

“Maple tends to blow up,” explained Louisville Bats third basemen Michael Griffin, “Those are the ones you see flying out on the field.”

A bat tends to break along the grain of the wood.  The grain on traditional ash bats runs the length of the bat, so when a bat breaks, it fractures, but is not likely to become shrapnel.

The grain of a maple bat, however, is shorter and can run from side to side of a baseball bat, increasing the chances of a bat breaking into several pieces.

“At some point the player is in jeopardy possibly, or the fan, so yeah it's a concern for us,” said Chuck Schupp, the manager of Professional Bat Sales for Hillerich & Bradsby’s Louisville Slugger, “but the whole reason maple is here is that's what the player's market asked for nine years ago.”

That's when Barry Bonds started using a maple bat. He wasn't the first, but his home runs prompted other players.

The relative brittle nature of maple means that batmakers at Louisville Slugger discard dozens of maple billets each week, if they notice anything which would make the bat more likely to break.  In a visit to the bat factory, Monday, WHAS11’s Joe Arnold observed a cart at a automated lathe was filled with rejected maple billets, while none of the ash billets were rejected.

One maple bat broke apart in the machine last week.  When they break apart in games, “It's like a torpedo with a sharp edge on it,” said Reds minor leaguer Griffin.

In April, the Pittsburgh Pirates hitting coach was scarred by a shard from a maple bat. 

Two weeks later, a broken maple bat broke the jaw of a woman at a Dodgers game.

Broken bats are nothing new.  Babe Ruth's from 1927 is the jewel of the Louisville Slugger Museum.

But the Babe's bat was shaped differently. 

Players today want wooden bats shaped like the aluminum bats they used as kids -- with thinner handles and bigger barrels. 

Schupp says players won't stop ordering those bats unless baseball makes them.  He says Hillerich and Bradsby is ready to lend their expertise.

Until then  - players and fans - watch out. 

Griffin recalled one such maple bat explosion last year in Florida. “The pitcher's throwing the ball just in a position where he's vulnerable. The bat hit his cheek and I thought to myself, I thought he was dead, to tell you the truth,” said Griffin.

Louisville Slugger says if Major League Baseball bans maple bats, it would take more than a year to get enough ash wood into production. 

With the majority of MLB players using maple bats, the union might fight any ban.  Louisville Slugger says one immediate measure they could implement is MLB changing the specifications on bats, with handles not as thin and barrels not as wide. MLB might also consider more protective screens for fans.

It won't happen until a pitcher is stabbed in the throat and then everyone will say... "Who knew"?

Unlike every other sport,baseball records are meaningless period. All other sports have exact deminsions on playing area. Be it a football field,basketball court,bowling alley,soccer field,etc.... Everyone has the EXACTLY the same size record size as all the others to overcome to be the record holder. In baseball,records mean nothing. One field has a bunt that can clear a 299ft right field fence. Another may have a 355 ft right field fence to clear for a home run. And yet another may have a 330ft,with a 30 ft high fence to clear in left field. All playing fields are so different that one left handed pull hitter player playing 22 years at the 299ft right field fence could hit 60-80 home run in one year and a thousand homers over 22 years. Where if he happens to end up with the team with the 30ft right field fence,then he ends up with 39 homers as his all time high and 550 as his career high. Not to mention what these different fields does to batting averages,E.R.A,wins and loses etc....
MLB records? There are all a big joke even if steriod never existed. The D.H. is just another joke to eliminate the true all around athletic person. With D.H a person could be capable of hitting 1200 homers. Without instant review you can never believe who really should have won in a large number of games. And it only take one big mistake that can't be overturned which gives the championship to a inferior team who didn't earn nor deserve the championship. So,who cares about fake sports? Especially baseball, Not I.

Maple is stronger than ash. The problem is the volume of quality maple trees. It will take several years for maple forests to meet the demand for baseall bats.

the maple is better than ash

sure it saves the maple trees!!!! MORE MAPLE SYRUP!!!!!! LMAO!!!!!!

Trim the barrel size by fractions of an inch on maple, or thicken the handles on most models. This will cut down on breakage and help out balance as well no matter what the weight of the bat. There isn't enough good ash out there to supply the hundreds of thousands of ballplayers that swing wood worldwide.

Ash had always been the wood of choice until Mr. Bonds started using maple. We all now know that maple wasn't the key to his home run power. Not only is maple a problem, the handle on current bats is toothpick thin so an inside pitch saws off the handle and the barrel goes into the stands.

I think it's amazing that players that have no expertise in making a safe bat can tell a company how to make a bat for them. HB should make "safe bats" and players can choose which bats they want based on what is offered, not the other way around.

Like the post before me, I agree.

I am not sure why players choose maple bats but is it worth the safety of the players, umpires and fans? If these are professional players I would think they would be able to hit with any type of bat. Thats why they get paid the big bucks.

Tell Us: Do you think maple bats should be banned from baseball?