The Physics Behind a Baseball Bat’s Sweet Spot
2nd April 2018
There’s a certain romance to wooden baseball bats that goes away the second you swing one. For those of us not trying to make it to the majors, using a wooden bat is mostly just a reminder that hitting a baseball is either painful or frustrating, depending on whether you’ve made contact with the ball or not.
See, the trouble with wood is that it vibrates. If you hit a baseball anywhere but at the bat’s so-called sweet spot, you feel all those vibrations in your hands, and about 10 swings laters you’ll have a bruise. But man, hit it right on the sweet spot and it feels like you are a baseball god.