Corked Baseball Bats
A corked baseball bat is a term that is often used in the world of baseball but not everyone knows exactly what it means. Corked baseball bats are bats that have had the inside drilled out and have then been refilled with cork or other light materials. This sort of practice aims to make the bat lighter overall so that the person using it can move faster, giving the swing a higher velocity. Using a corked baseball bat will also make the strength with which the ball is hit smaller, but not by a sufficient margin so as to matter very much, especially in the hands of an experienced player.
Creating corked baseball bats is relatively simple and consists of drilling the end of the bat and filling the resulted hole (about 1inch wide and 10 inches long) with cork or other light materials that would prevent the sound of the bat hitting the ball to be different from that of a regular bat.
The practice of using corked baseball bats has been outlawed in professional competitions and players who use such bats are usually penalized for it. Some of the world’s best players have been assigned penalties for using corked baseball bats, which can seem puzzling, because given their previous performances, there would be no reason for them to need to cork their bats. The argument also exists that corking a bat will not help the batting but instead will give the player a much needed psychological edge.
