craighonline.com

Although the debate about banning metal baseball bats in youth baseball isn’t settled, high school and college players locate themselves playing in wood bat summer time leagues much more and more these days. “It’s clearly a trend,” a coach told me last summer time on opening day of the John Marzano Wood Bat Scout League in Philadelphia. “Kids know they need to do this, their coaches do too, and the scouts love it. Hitting with wood is a lot less forgiving than metal.” All of this makes for a much more diverse baseball bat collection in summer dugouts — from Cape Cod to Surprise, Arizona. And as the High School Baseball Bat trend spreads to younger players, parents and coaches may well desire to know what the elite amateur players are utilizing in tournaments like the World Wood Bat Championships held in Marietta, Georgia at the East Cobb Baseball complex.