Sports Product Review

My oldest son will be a high school senior this fall and plans to play baseball in college. He’s always been a good hitter, but something happened recently that ratcheted him up notch. He began playing in a wood bat league. It was a blow to his confidence at first. The caliber of pitching was better than he was used to, and most of the kids had been hitting with wood all year. It took him a while to get his legs under him. Finally, it began to come together, and during his team’s most recent tournament, he was hitting in the number four hole.

Recently, his high school summer ball team began playing. They use aluminum. When he picked up the aluminum bat and went against lesser-quality pitching, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Through the first two games of the season he was seven for seven with a walk, before cooling off to 10 for 14 with three walks. The point is, I am absolutely convinced that hitting with wood makes a kid much better. There is no forgiveness – no fluke. You have no choice but to learn to hit the ball well.

The only problem is that he’s now on his third bat. And while they don’t cost as much as a good aluminum does, if you go through one every three weeks they do. So you can imagine how sold I am on MetalWood Bats, (www.metalwoodbats.com), an innovative combination of metal and wood that may revolutionize the bat industry.

You pick up the MetalWood and it just feels like a weapon. The combination of the quality wood they use and the metal handle gives it a trampoline effect when you swing. My son brought it to his recent tournament. I was watching from far away on a hill, and I started craning my eyes because it appeared that other kids were using it. Sure enough, it turned out that as soon as it came out of the bag, everyone else had to have a look. He told me that they were all guessing the bat must have cost $500-$600. (Actually, they’re $99.00). This was a big tournament and everyone wanted to do well, and we all know how superstitious baseball players are about their bats. Nonetheless, nearly everyone hit with it at least once. For several kids, it was the only bat they used all weekend. Some big-league-quality shots came off the barrel and I never worried once that it might break.

Last week we went back to Indiana to see some relatives. My sister teaches at a local high school and I wanted to work my boys out while we were on vacation, so she called the baseball coach and he unlocked the shed and the cage for us. What do you think I found in the shed, but a MetalWood. It made me think, “Why doesn’t every high school use these as part of their training?” I know that there are several reasons youth leagues don’t use wood bats, and one of them is replacement cost. I could see Little Leagues and Ripken Leagues transition into these in a heartbeat.

Any player who is serious about baseball should swing a wood bat as often as he can. There are lots of good wood bats out there, but the combination of quality, durability, affordability and cool you’ll get in a MetalWood is a grand slam.

Source: MetalWood Bats