The Crack of the Bat
February 1, 2010I was at Orange Coast College a few days ago helping out their catchers. I hung out for a bit afterwards and watched some batting practice. Most of the guys were hitting with aluminum, but there were a few slugging it out with wood.
Aside from the aesthetics of the wood bat sound vs. the metal sound, I realized as I was watching (and listening) that I was having big problems “hearing” where the ball was going. How do I better explain? Put it this way…if I shut my eyes and just listened, I could tell you from the sound of wood hitting ball, where the ball was going. If it was pulled, popped up, driven on a line, grounded somewhere, etc. I think I could be accurate about 99 percent of the time.
With the metal ping, I couldn’t be as accurate. That got me thinking about defensive jumps and reaction time. If you can’t accurately hear where the ball is going, how does that effect range? Now maybe it’s just because I haven’t been around metal bats for a long while. Maybe metal bats do have the same minuet tonal differences as wood. But, maybe not.
Maybe I’m overreacting. I never really talked to a pro player about this subject. Maybe I’ve become unusually sensitive to the sounds of bat and ball because I’ve been so close to the action and heard about 8 billion balls/bat collisions. That being said, I have a suspicion that defensive players rely on sound to enhance their reactions.
I know for sure that guys use it in the dugout during a game or in pre game batting practice. In the dugout, there’s a lot of times where you might be locked in conversation or playing a prank on someone or just might have your back turned to the action. Then the hitter makes contact and you instinctively duck or move in a certain direction and sure enough, the ball would just miss knocking your head off.
Or during batting practice when you’re shagging and there’s balls flying everywhere. You hear contact and move/react accordingly and avoid disaster…without ever seeing the ball. I’ll have to look into this more. Maybe this is part of the reason guys like Omar Visquel have such great range and instincts. Maybe they’re reacting to sound before they ever see the ball?
i might not be a expert like you, but i think the same way