10 great moments in bat history

1 In the early 1970s, journeyman outfielder Jose Cardenal was given some bats from a player named George Altman, who had spent several seasons in Japan. Cardenal loved them. "To me, the bat was unbreakable," Cardenal told The Washington Post in 2003. "It was a well-balanced bat. The handle was not too skinny. The barrel was perfect."

Cardenal asked Louisville Slugger to replicate the bat, and thus was born the C271 model — perhaps the most consistently popular bat in the major leagues for more than three decades.

In Louisville Slugger nomenclature, the letter refers to the last name of the player it is designed for, and the number refers to how many players with that initial have inspired bats. Thus, Cardenal was the 271st player with the letter C to have a bat named for him — but none have had the staying power of the C271. Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez are among the players who have used the C271 as their prime bat. Cardenal was a career .275 hitter in 18 seasons, but his legacy lives on.

2 One of the most coveted bats produced by Louisville Slugger was never used in the major leagues. It was the M216 bat ordered by Michael Jordan during his brief baseball-playing excursion in 1994, which never advanced past Class AA Birmingham. Jordan's bat was 35 inches and 33 ½ ounces and featured a black finish, with his name and "Chicago White Sox" stamped on the barrel. The first shipment never made it to White Sox camp, mysteriously disappearing en route. A game-used Michael Jordan M216 bat sells for nearly $3,000.

3 Do maple bats cause the ball to go farther? Many players swear that is true, part of the reason that maple bats have dominated baseball over the past decade.

However, in 2002, at the behest of Sports Illustrated, an inventor and bat manufacturer named Steve Baum of Traverse City, Mich., tested the theory. Using his "Baum Hitting Device," a machine that measures the exit velocity of a ball struck by a bat and which has been used for testing by the Baseball Research Center at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell (funded by MLB), he hooked up several bats.

Baum used an ash Louisville Slugger model, an ash Louisville Slugger that had been lacquered, and maple bats by Sam Bat and Old Hickory, two of the newer MLB-sanctioned bat companies that specialize in maple. All the bats resembled the standard C271 design.

The result, according to SI, was that the bats performed virtually identically, putting a 96-mph exit velocity on pitches thrown at 70 mph. The highest average exit velocity (96.78 mph) was actually produced by plain ash.

4 According to Louisville Slugger, the heaviest bat ever made by Louisville Slugger was 48 ounces, used by Edd Roush of the Reds. The lightest, 30 ounces, was used by Boston's Billy Goodman (who won a batting title in 1950) and Hall of Famer Joe Morgan. The longest bat was 38 inches, used by Hall of Famer Al Simmons, and the shortest was 30 inches, used by Wee Willie Keeler, another Hall of Famer.

5 In baseball's rule book, bats are covered primarily by Rule 1:10 (a): "The bat shall be a smooth, round stick not more than 2 ¾ inches in diameter at the thickest part and not more than 42 inches in length. The bat shall be one piece of solid wood."

That is followed by a note that says: "No laminated or experimental bats shall be used in a professional game [either championship season or exhibition games] until the manufacturer has secured approval from the Rules Committee of his design and methods of manufacture."

6 Steve Smith, a Mariners coach from 1996 to 1999, once said that the best bat he ever had during a seven-year minor-league career was purchased by his father — at Kmart. It was a Jackie Robinson model that he shared with teammate Tim Flannery while they played for Amarillo in the Texas League in 1979.

"It wouldn't break," Smith told The Indianapolis Star in 2000. "Tim had 95 hits and I had 90 at the All-Star break. He hit first and I hit second. He'd hit, then I'd walk up there, pick it up, and use it. It was a rock.

"I ended up going to Hawaii and left the bat with Tim. I never saw it again. He said he saw it a few years later, in a bat rack in Yuma. It never broke, I can tell you that."

7 Rick Monday loves to tell the story of his rookie season, when he was a 20-year-old called up to the Kansas City Athletics in 1966. When he started out 0 for 15, his teammates told him he had an unlucky bat. When Monday walked into the training room, they were waiting for him, and a curse-lifting ritual ensued. They dipped Monday's bat in the whirlpool, taped a cold tablet to the bat with a Band-Aid, and told him to take batting practice without altering anything.

Monday did so, and then used the bat in that night's game. In his first at-bat, he singled — the first of 1,619 hits in a 19-year career. Monday told The Vero Beach Press Journal in 2000 that whenever he sees a rookie in a slump, he finds his bat and attaches a cold tablet with a Band-Aid.

8 One more Rick Monday story from the Press-Journal: In 1968, the great Joe DiMaggio served as an Oakland A's coach. Monday had a favored bat that was beginning to splinter. DiMaggio told Monday to come early the next day, and he'd work on it.

DiMaggio applied rosin to the broken area, burning it in with a match and then pressing it in with a large bone.

"Then he took tiny tacks," Monday told the newspaper. "He put one in, he put two, he put three, he put four. He knocked those in, burned it, sanded it, burned it, made it really hard."

Monday used the bat in his next game, and fouled off the first pitch. Suspicious, home-plate umpire Ed Runge asked to see the bat.

"He says, 'Take this bat over to the dugout and tell DiMaggio he still isn't doctoring bats the correct way,' " Monday said. "I took it back over and I said, 'Joe, Ed thinks you did a really poor job on this bat.' "

9 DiMaggio, not surprisingly, had his own history with bats. In 1941, DiMaggio's favorite Louisville Slugger was stolen. DiMaggio asked Yankees announcer Mel Allen to go on the air with the offer of six new bats in exchange for the stolen model. The bat was retrieved, and DiMaggio proceeded to execute a 56-game hitting streak.

10 One of the cardinal rules in baseball is that you don't mess around with someone's bat without their permission.

Ryan Klesko, playing for the Atlanta Braves, was furious when a teammate, in the midst of a slump, grabbed a random bat out of the bat rack and in a rage, broke it. Turned out the random bat belonged to Klesko — his gamer, which he had been using for a month.

"I about liked to kill [him]," Klesko told The Columbus Dispatch. "I sawed a couple of his bats in half and left them sitting on home plate. When he came out the next day for batting practice, I said, 'Don't ever grab my bat again.' "

Larry Stone