Handle With Care – Proper Care Advice for your Wooden Bat

Getting a wooden baseball bat, especially your first bat, is like getting a little piece of baseball history. With wooden bats giving way to metal bats at the youth, high school, and college level, the crack of a wooden bat hitting might be an endangered sound reserved only for the big leagues, which makes wooden bats all the more special. For this reason, some people treat their wooden baseball bats the same way others treat their sports cars or family china. Even if you don’t want to go quite that far in reverence of your wooden bat, there are still some common sense steps you can take to care for your bat. With the proper care, your wooden bat can bring many happy years of baseball play.

The first step in caring for your bat comes on the baseball diamond while you’re using your bat. Hitting the ball with the right part of the bat – the sweet spot – can significantly increase the lifetime of your bat. While you’re experimenting with finding the exact sweet spot, make sure you swing the bat with the logo pointing upwards towards the sky. With the bat in that position, you’ll be hitting the ball with the hardest part of the bat and decrease the likelihood that the bat will break.

After the game, it is important to clean your bat. In fact, you should clean your bat after every single usage to keep it in top shape. Any ball marks on the bat can be wiped off with soap and water, or you can wipe it down with mineral spirits or alcohol. If you use pine tar in the handle, it is especially important to use a stronger cleaner like alcohol to clean the bat, but never use paint thinner or nail polish removal, which will strip the finish off your bat. Do not let dirt or tar sit on the bat, as it will seep into the grain and weaken the bat.

Never allow your bat to get wet. Do not lay it in wet grass or let it sit out in the rain. If your bat does get wet, dry it immediately with soft cloth. As an extra precaution, after your bat is dry, wipe it down with linseed oil.

Hitting ball after ball is bound to put a few lumps and bumps into your wooden bat. To smooth those bumps out, rub your bat with another wooden bat, or even a small piece of bone. Use the bat or bone like sandpaper, rubbing hard for at least five minutes. Make sure all the surfaces are smooth and even when you finish. Do this as often as possible; the larger you let the bumps get, the harder they will be to buff out, and the more at risk they put your bat of breakage. Never rub your bat with anything that has a rough surface or hard edges, as you’ll only scratch your bat and further weaken it.

How you store your bat is important to its upkeep as well. Bats should never be stored flat. They should be stored vertically, with the handle side facing up. Storing bats horizontally means risking damaging the hitting surface. Bats should also never be stored in trunks or boxes; they should be stored in an airy, dry place, where moisture cannot build up and damage the wood. If you are storing more than one bat, they should not be able to knock into each other and damage their hitting surfaces.

Beyond these standard care measures, there may be other care techniques required for your bat based on the kind of wood used and the type of construction. Check with your bat manufacturer for their care advice; they may sell cleaning materials specifically designed for your bat.

Whether your wooden bat is your baby, or simply want to maintain your bat for the best performance possible, these simple cleaning and storage measures can keep your bat at the top of its game. Remember, if your bat is going to go into the Baseball Hall of Fame someday, you want it looking good!

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