Baseball has been America’s national pastime since the formation of professional baseball in 1869 and has gone through many crazes, like the basket catch and the bat flip.
But one craze that may help the future of the game is the creation of the torpedo bat.
Originally created by MIT physicist and current Miami Marlins field coordinator Aaron Leanhardt, the bowling-pin-shaped bat moves the barrel of the bat closer to the batter’s hands, changing the position at which the bat can produce its most power.
According to Yahoo Sports, the first player who publicly used a torpedo bat was New York Yankees designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton during the 2024 MLB postseason.
These bats are absolutely helping the game. For weeks, fans got a taste of how exciting baseball can be. Fans want and love to see home runs, and these torpedo bats have been giving them what they wanted.
Though Stanton went off with seven home runs in that postseason, the torpedo bat was overlooked and continued to be overlooked until YES Network broadcaster Michael Kay pointed out a new-looking bat used by Yankees second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. on Saturday, March 29.
According to ESPN, Kay was notified about the bats during spring training and mentioned them in his broadcast when Chisholm came up in the second inning after the Yankees hit four home runs in the first inning.
After Kay had mentioned these new bats, the Yankees hit five more homers, setting a franchise record for home runs in a game and sending the sports world into a frenzy.
For the next week, all any sports fan could talk about were the torpedo bats. They were all over my feed on the ESPN app. Because I’m on the school’s baseball team, we all talked about torpedo bats. Even people who I had never talked about sports with were asking me if I was going to get a torpedo bat.
This made me start thinking, will these bats make the game more popular?
Stars of the game like Francisco Lindor and Elly De La Cruz have made the bat more famous, which could help more fans be interested in the game, because if the stars are having crazy seasons, people will want to tune in to see what all the buzz is about.
As this season progresses, new storylines will form, but a mainstay will be torpedo bats, which will have a profound impact on the game.
