Physics of Cheating in Baseball

[steve B]

I don't buy their ideas about the corked bat. I can see where it wouldn't have any effect at the same speed, but increasing the bat speed has to have a positive effect. Kinetic energy is half the mass times velocity squared.
So you'd have to have a very large change in mass to offset a decent change in bat speed.

Did they test with actual pro caliber players swinging? There's a huge difference between what they can do and the rest of us. Personally I use as heavy a bat as I can find because my hands will only move so fast. I've played with a couple people who had some real athletic ability and they both used very light bats, and couldn't hit as well with mine. One guy hit a limited flight softball pitched slow pitch roughly 350ft! the bat was something like 31oz, almost a little league bat. And he didn't finish college ball.(Had to choose baseball or enginering and chose engineering, but we all know the odds...)

Steve B