Why is corking a bat illegal?

[Moose Milligan]

It was a good epsiode Drungo and you have the premise right. Yeah, they can swing it faster, but there isn't as much mass there...so it's not as effective.

The experiment with the balls in the humidor was probably the best one.

One of their better overall shows, definitely.

[Camden_yardbird]

To call what they do corking is a misnomer. They do not use cork but rather most of the time it is shredded rubber. The benefit is slight in bat speed. Where they really get the advantage is the reaction of the rubber, imparting more "bounce" then a full wood bounce. Take the top off of a metal bat, insert racket balls, and see the difference.

[Migrant Redbird]

For some reason I think that it used to be illegal to have the end of the barrel of the bat be missing. Shoot I don't know how to describe this but you know how there are two types of woods bats, those with a solid top and those with a dip in it, where the tip has been removed.

I recall when the Cardinals played an exhibition tour in Japan following a World Series win (probably 1964, but possibly 1967) and noticed some Japanese players using the bats with a conical end on the barrel. Lou Brock, and possibly some other Cardinals, brought some of those bats back and were using them in spring training the next year. I'm not positive, but it does seem to me that they might have been illegal for regular season games at the time -- certainly there was a mild controversy over Lou Brock using them.

[HookMan]

The obvious answer is that the powers-that-be think that it gives the batter some kind of unfair advantage.

But on Mythbusters last night...

Thanks for the show tip!

[BaltimoreTerp]

I love Mythbusters, so I was excited when this one came on.

However, I think they actually did the wrong experiment for the corked bat. They seemed to be assuming that the effect was with the mass of the bat, not the speed of the bat, so they were swinging different bats at the same speed.

If they had done an experiment where the same force was applied to a corked bat and a regular bat, where they could measure both the differences in speed and the differences in distance when the ball was hit, it would have been more effective.

I was surprised, though, when they measured sliding versus running to the base and found that it is faster to slide when you have to stop on the base.

Might have to send my above complaint in, as well as suggesting they measure diving-for versus running-through first base, so they can do a revisit