Check out the Bat Militia for more great savings. All you have to do is join to receive the discounts. I have some video footage of some of the videos that were shot during our barnstorming days. From playing at the prestigious Smoky Mountain as well as some footage of one of the Major League baseball players playing a game of softball for charity.

I am still working on some new videos of footage from games that were played in the 80's and 90's. So stay tuned for those. I still have the interviews that I have done with some of the games superstars. I plan on putting some new interviews in here as soon.

As we enter the 2011 season the game is changing everyday. When the bat manufacturers were trying to develope softball bats in the early 1970's little did they know that with about 30 years of technology we would be able to produce the perfect softball bat. What I mean by that is it took 30 years of technology to develope a bat where everyone can hit a home run. Size really doesn't matter that much today like it did in the old days. A lot of the softball players today are built for the way the game is played today. You need to be real fast to play the outfield to cover a lot of ground because of the 3 man outfield. If you play in the infield you need to have great quick hands. The ball is coming off of the bat a whole lot faster today than it did back in the 80's. So with that the rules have changed over the years and the complete ball player is what is ruling the softball world. Back in the 70's, 80's and 90's you get away with big players playing certain spots on the field because the name of the game was the home run. It was easier and quicker to hit 4 home runs in row versus hitting 3 singles to set up the grand slam. In yesteryear softball if you didn't hit a home run you usually didn't try for a double because the next batter was going to try and hit out. There were no home run limits back then and that was the way the game was played. You did have your complete ball players like Dennis Graser and Mike Nye's that would go for every extra base hit they could because that was the way they played the game. On the other hand you would have the player that if he didn't hit a home run every time up he would get pissed off. I saw Craig Elliott hit 9 screaming line drives in a row all for base hits. He was 9 for 9 and was really upset. I said to him, "hey big man what's the matter?" He said "hell if I want to hit singles I should stay home. I come here to hit home runs and that was it." You see where I am coming from!

 

That is why I said today it is a totally different game. I understand when people say that the yesteryear game takes too long, or it is boring. I never felt that way because I worked at something to perfect it and I couldn't wait to bat again and again. Could I play today with the way rules are in the upper level. I don't know. I didn't have to so I don't look at it like that. I look at softball this way. To be a winner you have to play by the rules and if you play by the rules you got a pretty good chance of winning. So to be able to play softball on any level today you need to be able to base hit and play excellent defense. . Your top notch players today can all hit for average. When you see a big guy like Rusty Bumgardner or Jeff Wallace shooting the ball in the wholes or in the gaps when the home runs are up is quite impressive . Could today's players play way back when. Oh yeah. For sure. The only thing was that the home run became the way of the game and if you couldn't hit the long ball you had a hard time getting on some of the top teams in the country. I asked my coach Mr Neale one time while having breakfast. I said "do you think we created a monster by hitting all of those home runs?" He said "No." His response was he thought that maybe we made the mistake playing with the poly core balls. See, before the poly cores became so popular we played with cork. You would usually play a league game or even a tournament game with 2 brand new balls and one used one. We hit hit Dudley SB12's and Hardwood. I know for a fact that when the game would start if the Hardwood got fouled off somewhere nobody would go after it. We would rather play with a used Dudley Even in the 7th inning you could still compress the balls and they would still go. So today we play with hard poly cores because we want them to stay hard the whole game. Yes the game has changed....

Ray Demarini had a big hand in the development of the high tech bat era. The old aluminum softball bats that were made out of CU-31 and C-405 were great bats back in the day. Yes we hit good balls with them but the sweet spot was considerably small compared to the first double wall bats that Ray developed. Once the double wall bat hit the market the sweet spot became much larger creating a forgiveness to enhance the sweet spot. With double wall bats they would get smashed but would still play unbelievable with dents in the barrel. I actually asked Ray Demarini if he wanted to make the double wall bat for Nike when I was working for them and he said HELL YES!! But to my sadness Nike decided against that and Nike really never got it's feet on the ground for high end softball. The Nike Air Storm that Bombat made was a great bat but the manufacturer of the bat could not get past the quality control issues to produce a first rate bat. So Nike decided to go the low end route and develope softball bats for the rec player. I give Nike credit because they did not quit completely and still produced some bats for collegiate baseball as well as women's colligate fast pitch programs.

Since the year 2000 all of the manufacturers are really after the bat market with the introduction of composite softball and baseball bats. As I said before the game is constantly changing and you have to be able to play by the rules. Good Luck.......