Posted by: Patrick (PDE@zoomtown.com) on Sat Jan 17 06:44:50 2009

I see hundreds of references to bat weight in books and Internet sites. However, I rarely see discussions of bat length. Three years ago I tried an experiment with my own son. He was a very large and strong eight year old. I kept the weight of his bat constant and dropped the length by two inches. He went from hitting in the high .400s to consistently hitting in the high .600's over the last two seasons. The change was immediate and consistent. This situation may be confounded by the fact he has always been a good contact hitter and we focus on biomechanics constantly.