Corked Bats

[pippin_999]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Cindy C." 
<cindysphynx at c...> wrote:

> Baseball is so weird!  If a corked bat is a way of cheating, why 
> don't they inspect or X-ray bats players use, just the way they 
test  people for drugs?
>

They may start doing that now...but I think they don't routinely test 
for drugs in baseball, only if  there is suspicion. Checking in as a 
native Chicagoan and Cubs fan (I believe it's no coincidence that 
Chudley Cannons and Chicago Cubs have the same initials) the 
physicists quoted in the Chicago Tribune are saying that the 
distance  advantage Haggridd mentioned is negligible because 
it's countered by the lighter mass of the corked bat.  Force = 
Mass times Acceleration and all that. The real advantage of a 
swinging a lighter,faster bat is that you get a few more 
milliseconds to judge whether to swing at a fast ball. This may 
help a batter in a slump, though the aid may be mostly 
psychological.

Pippin